Long before his father, Kalen owed, he arrived at the scene as one of the best coaches in university football, Alexis Deboer of Washington was announced as a toletera in the loan in the softball scene.
It was a 6 -year -old kindergarten who played with youth softball in Carbondale, Illinois, where Kalen was the offensive coordinator in southern Illinois, one of the many stops on the way to become a chief coach in Alabama.
On this spring day, while most other children played on earth, Alexis climbed into the dish (the coaches threw the children at that age) and hit a ball on the fence of the field that bounced his mother's deep pilot.
“My first thought was: 'Ok, maybe we have something here', but the little turkey hit my car,” joked his mother, Nicole, emphasizing that he was one of those “small fields of young children.”
However, the following week, when Alexis hit, all coaches shouted at the rest of the children: “Alexis is awake. Back and pay attention!”
Alexis is still playing homers, but in a much larger field and stage. In his first season in Washington, he became the second first -year student in the history of the program to reach 20 home runs on his way to win the first year honors of the year in Big Ten of the year. On Friday he connected his 21st home run of the season in his first NCAA tournament to the turn during a 6-3 defeat against the state of Mississippi. The Huskies continue their trip through regional Saturday of double elimination against Brown at 4:30 pm et in ESPN+.
When asked about his Banner season, Alexis said: “Honestly, it is my teammates and coaches and all their support to help me make the transition to the university and know that they will support me no matter how to do it in the field.”
Kalen offered abundant laugh when his daughter's response was told.
“That's funny,” Kalen said, the antithesis of a sound bite machine behind the microphone. “But we talk about that, it is easier when they interview you not only to talk about yourself. You talk about your teammates, your coaches and how great they are.
“It's never about you. This is the team.”
Alexis listened and learned well and learned well and learned well. She is living her dream of playing softball for coach Heather Tarr and Los Huskies, a dream that turned on long before her father arrived in Washington as a soccer coach in 2022.
“That is what has been great of all this. It is paved in its own way,” Kalen said. “I think people perhaps at one time, especially when he first pledged to Washington, thought it was more about me, but she has shown that this was completely on her, and that is the way in which coach Tarr had always approached.
Alexis, who has mainly played the first base this season, leads Huskies in almost all offensive categories. Upon entering Friday, I was hitting .369 with 54 ranked races and had surely hit its last 20 games. He also made only one mistake in 51 games.
The entire Deboer family is in the Regional Lubbock in Texas this weekend to see Alexis play in his first NCAA tournament and the 31st consecutive appearance for Washington, a first -year team that makes its way in the NCAA field.
It is difficult to find a sport that someone in the family must have not played. Alexis's younger sister, Avery, who is in high school, plays volleyball and participates in equestrian events. Kalen was a record receiver in football in Sioux Falls and also played three years of baseball at the university. Before immersing full time in training, he briefly played in a Semipro Soccer League, as well as in some sand football, and played a professional baseball season in an independent league in Canton, Ohio.
But the most competitive member of the family, according to Alexis, is his mother.
“We all have fire. It simply comes out in different ways,” said Nicole, who was a twice player of the year Gatorade of the year of the high school of southern Dakota in basketball. “But I agree that I am a little more spicy than the rest.”
Nicole, who rejected division I to stay closer to home, is still among the 25 best scorers (1,187 race points) in division II of the University of Augusta in Sioux Falls.
“She was Steph Curry before Steph Curry,” Kalen said. “Half Court had been found, he stopped 3 and would throw it from Deep. I mean, he could shoot him from anywhere on the floor.”
Only once Kalen dared to challenge Nicole on the basketball court. They played on horseback shortly after getting to know each other.
“I won and I wouldn't play it again because I wanted to be undefeated against her,” Kalen joked.
Nicole's replica: “I'm still angry, really angry. He won me legitimately and we haven't played since then.”
So, clearly, Alexis receives his competitive fire naturally. She said that even board games with the family, especially the track, can be irritable.
“In general, Kalen is making recruitment or working calls, but when he plays, he has to win,” Nicole said. “It's so competitive.”
Tarr, now in his 21st season as Washington coach, had a good idea of what he was getting when Alexis promised the Huskies as Junior in high school. He had been at meetings of the Athletics Department with Kalen, but most importantly, he had done his homework on Alexis, who in turn had done his homework in the Washington program.
While living in Fresno, California, when Kalen was a Fresno State coach, Alexis attended a softball camp in Washington. She and Nicole even took a Washington-Cal football match while they were in the city.
There was another tie between the Debioers and Tarr. Sara Pickering, a member of the Husky Hall of Fame and one of the best players in the history of Washington softball, was an assistant coach at Alexis high school (Clovis North) in Fresno. Pickering and Tarr were teammates in Washington.
“In addition, it was Kalen, I must, so he will raise something quite special due to what he is as a person,” said Tar It is what you want as a coach.
“It keeps everything clean and easy, just a great teammate, and you can train it hard and realistically, and it is liberating to have someone like that in your team.”
Alexis's path to first -year stardom in Washington has not been easy. Given his father's career, he made seven movements throughout the country and played in 11 travel teams during that time.
“Many times, when Nicole and the girls could move when she got a new job, the best travel teams had already been chosen and were full,” Kalen said. “It was as if I had to start again.”
But the constant throughout that movement was that Alexis's batting coach was his father. From the moment he could hold a bat, Kalen helped develop his swing. And when he came home one day from the kindergarten with a steering wheel on youth softball, things got serious.
“He knew enough to be dangerous,” Kalen joked, noting that Alexis was never enough to root with a coach.
Alexis said that he speaks with his family almost every day, and while she and her father try to maintain softball conversation, she said she will always be indebted to him for always being there to hit her land balls, take her to the batting cages and offer him advice.
“I was very comfortable with him, and he always found time,” Alexis said. “He never pushed where he was not fun. He taught. He didn't let the little things slide, but I knew what my dreams were and did everything possible to make those dreams come true. Above all, he was a great father.”
That is why Alexis told his father what he did when the crimson tide arrived after Kalen with a multimillion -dollar offer to be his next soccer coach.
Nicole said that the only possible possible one in Kalen accepted the work was her desire to make sure that Alexis was fine when she stayed on the west coast, while the rest of the family was headed by the country to Tuscaloosa.
But when she spoke with Alexis, she made it easy for everyone.
“I am just where I want to be, just where I should be,” Alexis told his father. “I know how important it is for you, what great work is. We can both have our own paths.”
“It was an opportunity that I could not reject, the guy you are lucky if you have once in a lifetime,” Alexis said. “He loved Washington. We all did. But it was Alabama.”
Outside the family, I should have speculated that Alexis would go with his family and join the softball program classified nationwide in Alabama, but said it was never consideration.
“I never want to leave this place,” said Alexis, who was already looking at Washington when his father was the offensive coordinator in Indiana in 2019. “There was no doubt because I trust coach Tarr and this coaching staff and what we are building here.”
Kalen and Nicole have been able to see several of Alexis's games this season. Coincidentally, his first university success occurred against Alabama at the opening of the season in a tournament in Tucson, Arizona, and his first homer arrived two days later against Crimson Tide. I must be there for both games.
“It's great to know that they are there. We have always been a nearby family,” Alexis said. “And even when they are not there, I feel their support throughout the country.”
And, he said, he can always listen to his father's instructions, have the right tempo, load correctly, maintain a line traction mentality, go to the opposite field, on the back of his head.
“I take it a bit of him to each game that play, even when he is not there,” Alexis said.
For Kalen, being able to be a father seeing his son playing in a postseason environment is as satisfactory as it seems. While he will not make any crucial decision, there will surely be some nervous moments for the whole family.
“There has been much attention in it for different reasons, and it has been solid and consisting of every way,” Kalen said. “He is having fun. That is what you want as a father. He has some incredible friends there, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate those friends, even his parents and the way in which the Washington family has taken care of it.
“She is just where she is supposed to be.”
