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Top Florida Atlantic basketball assistant’s run to the Final Four started in Durham

Kyle Church spent his entire life around soccer, the son of a coach, but where he grew up exerted a stronger pull than how he grew up. He would skip school on that one Friday in March to attend the ACC basketball tournament, staying with his grandparents in Greensboro.

When it came time, in eighth grade, to choose a sport, soccer never had a chance. It was always basketball.

“As far as sports goes, there’s nothing like that,” Church said Thursday.

After all those years Kyle spent as a kid watching Robbie Church coach women’s soccer teams, at Charlotte and Vanderbilt and for the past 22 years at Duke, now the father will watch the son this weekend on basketball’s biggest stage.

Kyle Church, who played soccer and basketball at Riverside before choosing to become a hoops walk-on at Charlotte, is now Dusty May’s lead assistant at Florida Atlantic, the No. 9 seed that’s the biggest upstart at a Final Four full of them. He followed his own path when it came to the sport, but in his father’s footsteps when it came to a profession.

Florida Atlantic Owls head coach Dusty May coaches from the sideline in the second half as the Florida Gators hosted the Florida Atlantic Owls at Billy Donovan Court at Exactech Arena in Gainesville, FL on Monday, November 14, 2022. At left is Owls assistant coach Kyle Church.
Florida Atlantic Owls head coach Dusty May coaches from the sideline in the second half as the Florida Gators hosted the Florida Atlantic Owls at Billy Donovan Court at Exactech Arena in Gainesville, FL on Monday, November 14, 2022. At left is Owls assistant coach Kyle Church.

“I knew my future probably wasn’t in playing, and like a lot of people you start to realize maybe I’m going to focus on something else,” Kyle Church said. “Obviously being around my dad, and growing up loving basketball, it was just a natural progression for me.”

Robbie and Linda Church will be there in Houston, an experience Robbie has had many times as a soccer coach, but a first as a father, in the stands instead of on the sidelines.

“We’ve been fortunate to go to a number of (College Cups), a number of final games,” Robbie Church said. “We haven’t won it, although there have been some really great wins along the way. But I think to see your kids have success, it’s really rewarding.”

This is the Triangle’s tenuous connection to the Final Four, the son of a Hall of Fame coach in one sport who is making a name for himself in another. Kyle Church has been along for the entire ride with May at FAU, and his work comes with the highest of endorsements from his boss: “He’s ready to be a head coach.”

Learning from Bobby Lutz

For now, Church is bonded with his father by profession, if not job title.

“To hear the two over the phone, after a soccer game Kyle will call and they discuss everything, and the same thing the other way around,” Linda Church said. “Kyle grew up around sports his whole life, around universities his whole life. They both just love what they’re doing.”

His sister Ashley played soccer at UNC Wilmington, but Kyle walked on in basketball at Charlotte, in part because then-49ers coach Bobby Lutz had coached with his father there — Church practically grew up in Charlotte’s gym — and while Lutz couldn’t promise him a lot of playing time, he could promise him a basketball education.

As a scout-team player, Church’s most famous moment was a garbage-time 3-pointer at Ohio State. As a future coach, it took a little while to find his stride.

“He knew he wanted to coach,” Lutz said. “The first couple years, he said he wanted to coach. I don’t blame him. He’s a player, dating girls, doing everything he’s supposed to do in college. But his last two years he worked really hard.”

By his junior year, as the real world started to loom before him, he was watching film with the assistant coaches, taking over the scout team and helping with practices. All the exposure to coaching over the course of his entire life was starting to come out of him, especially as he learned all the other offenses and defenses in the Atlantic 10. He was truly becoming his father’s son.

“I talk to our scout team about it now, too,” Church said. “‘You guys have so much to contribute. Learn it, run it, learn how your player plays.’ It can give you a big advantage. It was definitely something I grew into and hopefully got better at. I’m on our scout team guys hard, they’ll tell you, because I was there.”

When it was time to find a job, a Duke connection led to his first and most enduring break. Lutz had put Mississippi coach Andy Kennedy on a list of people to call. On his staff: Mike White, whose father happened to be Kyle Church’s father’s boss, then-Duke athletic director Kevin White. The younger White gave the younger Church a summer-camp job, and they rode the coaching ladder together.

Starting at the bottom

Church’s climb took him from Ole Miss to Louisiana Tech with Mike White, then a year at a junior-college coached by a former Kennedy assistant, then back to Louisiana Tech with White and then on to Florida, where May was a fast-rising assistant. Along the way, Church rose from graduate assistant to video coach to director of operations.

When May took the head job at Florida Atlantic in 2018, he took Church with him, sorting through the mess they inherited there only to come out at the other end in Houston at the Final Four, 35-3 and two wins from a national title.

“He’s meant everything to me,” May said. “He’s been there every step of the way. He can finish my sentences. And even early on, when Kyle was the only assistant coach I’d been with as a first-year head coach, he was able to share to the rest of the staff when I didn’t have time how I thought, what I wanted, what I liked, what I didn’t like.”

Robbie Church, meanwhile, has gone along for the ride. He and Linda went to Texas for the Conference USA tournament and FAU’s NCAA tournament opener in Columbus. They’d been to Madison Square Garden many times to watch Duke games, and were there in 2017 to watch Kyle when Florida lost to South Carolina with a trip to the Final Four on the line.

The Churches will be in Houston as well, although that meant rescheduling a long-planned recruiting trip to a youth tournament in Phoenix. Church turned that over to his staff. The Blue Devils play Wake Forest on Sunday in a spring scrimmage, and they might have to do it without their head coach, as well.

“We’ll see what happens,” Robbie Church said. “We’ve got a plane ticket to come back if we lose. If we win? I’ve got a phenomenal staff. They won’t miss me.”

Meanwhile, the walk-on who got his start in coaching by running the scout team at Charlotte as a walk-on was entrusted with the scouting report for Saturday’s national semifinal against San Diego State.

Certainly father and son both know the value of having, or being, a trusted assistant.

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