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“The expectations are high,” Conradt says. “I think most coaches who have an opportunity to coach here, I think they feel that way because the standards are high. I think Vic is aware of that. He couldn’t have grown up in this state without realizing that Texas has high expectations. That makes everybody’s job more difficult, but he is certainly up to the challenge and up to the task.”
Schaefer inherits a team that has the potential No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft in Charli Collier, a brilliant graduate transfer at point guard in Kyra Lambert and a determined cast of underclassmen led by Celeste Taylor. Still, all roads go through Waco. When Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, who has known Schaefer for decades, called to congratulate him in the spring, she emphasized that she didn’t want them to be perceived as adversaries.
“Vic is going to be very good at Texas,” says Blair, the A&M coach. “That is going to be his retirement job — and he’s not anywhere close to retiring. He’s going to get it done, just like we got it done here and he got it done at Mississippi State.”
In La Grange, Schaefer says goodbye to his parents, leaves the cemetery and drives past the Oak Motel, a local landmark named for the celebrated tree two blocks away where soldiers gathered before heading off to war. His grandmother Louise used to live next to the motel, and occasionally, when he’d visit on weekends, he’d be spoiled with a trip to the Bon Ton Restaurant, where he’d eat breakfast, spin in circles on the chrome bar stools and feel like a big deal for leaving a 35-cent tip.
Some things are different, but some things stay the same. The Bon Ton was sold in 1985, and its owners, the Weikels, cousins of Schaefer’s, opened a bakery off Highway 71 not long after. So Schaefer pops in, asks for some kolaches, a cherry cream pie and homemade bread, then heads west, beginning the hour-long trek back to Austin.
And so it is that the son of Charles and Dot and of the Lone Star State, born at the old Brackenridge Hospital on the southern edge of the university’s campus, reacquaints himself with what he knew all those years ago.
He is home.
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