Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

A Hicksville philosophy major's road to the Rio Olympics

Chris Leazier, a Miami grad and the assistant coach of the Nigerian Olympic basketball team, stands on the court in Rio.
Chris Leazier, a Miami grad and the assistant coach of the Nigerian Olympic basketball team, stands on the court in Rio.

By Audrey Davis, News Editor

What can you do with a degree in philosophy? The options are pretty endless. Some people use their degree to go to law school. Others become professors. But not Chris Leazier, a 1992 graduate of Miami University. He went on to be the assistant coach of the Nigerian basketball team in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

Leazier's passion for basketball began when he was just a kid himself.

"Like most kids, probably, my dad started taking me and my brother to high school basketball games," Leazier said. "I just kind of fell in love with the sport."

Leazier played basketball all four years of high school in the small town of Hicksville, Ohio.

His former teacher and varsity basketball coach, Dave Blue, described Leazier as intelligent and motivated on and off the court.

"I'm not surprised Chris is doing anything he wants to do because when he put his mind to something, you knew he would be successful," said Blue.

"He was the smallest guy on our team, but he was good," said former teammate Tim Shock. "I was the starting point guard our freshman, sophomore, and junior years and then he took over as point guard our senior year."

Leazier thought back to his high school career and stifled a laugh.

"I was a very, very, very, average high school basketball player, and I would say average at best," said Leazier.

In high school, Leazier dreamt of going to Indiana University after graduation to be a student manager for the basketball team under Bob Knight, but he ended up going down a different path for a while.

"[Going to Indiana] was my main objective, but I was really a very poor student, so that option wasn't available to me," Leazier said.

Instead, he went on to attend Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia for a year before transferring to Miami University. At that point, he was really interested in philosophy and decided that would be his major.

While at Miami, Leazier was under the advisement of Michael Goldman.

"He was very enthusiastic and very committed to philosophy education," said Goldman. "He cared a lot about the young people and what was then called the free school movement and was very dedicated to coming up with new ways of teaching them."

After graduating from Miami, Leazier and his wife, Amy, moved to Chicago. She was getting her doctorate at Northwestern, and he started a Ph.D program in philosophy at DePaul University.

"Even though I kind of changed course at a certain point in my college years," Leazier said, "I was involved in basketball in some way."

While at DePaul, Leazier would play lunchtime basketball for exercise, along with both the men's and women's coaching staff.

"The head coach of the women's team was Doug Bruno, and I would stay after games in the locker room and ask Doug a bunch of questions," said Leazier.

One day, Bruno told Leazier that he could help him get a coaching job if he wanted one, so he quit the Ph.D program, with his wife's support, in 1995 and started coaching formally for the first time at Saint Ignatius College Prep in Chicago.

Leazier had reached the point in his Ph.D program where he was teaching classes, but decided to make the switch to coaching when he realized he couldn't generate the same kind of enthusiasm and intensity while teaching that he could in a gym.

"When you're interacting with people in an environment that is in no way compulsory, which basketball isn't, there's just a stronger likelihood that you're going to get this combination of enthusiasm and competitive intensity that is really hard to duplicate in other environments," said Leazier.

Goldman said Leazier's choice to pursue something other than philosophy didn't really surprise him.

"I think he was more interested in helping young people than philosophy, and I guess being a coach is one way of doing that," Goldman said.

After his wife finished her Ph.D program and after a year in Iowa, they packed up and moved to Vermont, so his wife could take a job at Dartmouth College.

Leazier took a high school coaching job at Thetford Academy in 1997, where, a year later, he would meet the current head coach of the Nigerian basketball team, Will Voight -- although, at that time, Voight was coaching the boys' soccer team.

Both men would go through various career changes in the years that followed, leading them to grow apart.

Voight went on to work as the video coordinator for the San Antonio Spurs before moving around the country to work at different universities. Eventually, he moved to Norway to start his professional career in coaching.

Leazier stayed at Thetford Academy until 2000 and then worked as assistant coach to both the men's and women's basketball teams at Dartmouth until 2007.

In 2009, Leazier and Voight reconnected after Leazier parted ways with Saint Anselm College, his employer at the time.

"I was out of work, and at that same time [Voight] got his first head coaching job at the NBA Development League in Bakersfield, California," Leazier said. "He said to me, 'Hey, listen. I know you're trying to figure out what your next step is. I want you to come out here for a year.'"

Leazier took Voight up on the offer and was the assistant coach of the Bakersfield Jam from 2009-2010.

After that, Leazier had various other coaching jobs, mostly in Vermont, until the summer of 2015, when Voight called Leazier and told him he had been offered the position of head coach of the Nigerian basketball team.

"What he wanted me to do was go to be on the staff for the 2015 Afrobasket championship--the winner of which would automatically qualify to go to Rio the following summer," Leazier said. "But I was not able to do that because, after 18 years at Dartmouth, my wife took a job as the head of the Philosophy Department at Penn State."

So, Leazier, his wife and their four kids moved to State College, Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian team ended up winning the tournament and qualifying for the Olympic Games, and in May of 2016, Voight once again contacted Leazier and offered him a position as assistant coach, which he accepted.

Leazier was with the team preparing for two months, mostly in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In late July, the team flew to Houston. The week they spent training culminated in an exhibition game versus Team USA on August 1. The Nigerian team lost 110-66 to the NBA's best in a sold-out Houston Rockets arena. They brushed off the loss and focused on their next big game. They were headed to Rio.

"You think, 'Wow. They're taking me out to see this incredible city and all of these events.' But of course, as a coach or a competitor, you're really just focused on doing what you have to do to win the next game," said Leazier.

Leazier said that it was really interesting to be living in the Olympic Village and interacting with athletes and coaches.

"If it had not been for that component, we could have been in the middle of Nebraska, and it would have been the same kind of experience," said Leazier.

Although the Nigerian team failed to move on in the preliminary rounds, Leazier was still grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime experience.

"Maybe one of the things that's unique about me is that I'm not trying to turn my Olympic experience back into a full-time coaching opportunity," said Leazier.

Though of course, Leazier said, he always has his eyes and ears open for another coaching opportunity.