Teaching Chicago’s hard-working values, basketball legend Tom Kleinschmidt builds a dynasty at DePaul Prep

CHICAGO — At DePaul College Prep’s campus on the North Side, the boys’ basketball championship rally has become an annual rite of spring.

They’ve held one in each of the last three years – thanks in large part to their coach, Tom Kleinschmidt. 

It’s not often that a high school’s best basketball player becomes its best basketball coach, too.

But Kleinschmidt has always defied the odds.

“Thirteen years ago, people laughed at us when we said that t the first team because we were not very good at the time, now it’s kind of coming to fruition, it feels pretty good,” Kleinschmidt said.

In 1990, as a 6-foot-5-inch junior, he led an underdog Gordon Tech team to the state championship game and a runner-up finish to King, then ranked as the top team in the nation.  But Kleinschmidt led all scorers in the IHSA tournament.

In 2012, returned to his alma mater (later re-named DePaul prep) as the head coach, and he built a powerhouse program that has just completed a rare three-peat championship, becoming just the fifth school to win three consecutive IHSA boys basketball championships in Illinois history.

“I’ve been blessed,” Kleinschmidt said. “Everything’s come together. I have great players. I have great support. I work hard at it. I have a great coaching staff. I trust them and we get results.”

The results are astonishing. Over the last three years, DePaul Prep has amassed a record of 91-and-18. The team has made it to the IHSA final four in 5 of the last 7 years.

“When I got into coaching, I thought it was about wins and losses,” he said. “Then the first day, you’re hit with a kid that’s having a problem a real problem at home. Everything changes from that point. I’m here to mentor and help kids. If we win along the way, and we give them some life skills, that’s what it’s about.”

The values he instills in his players – respect, discipline, and hard work — are the same ones he learned growing up on the city’s Northwest Side around Riis Park and Shabbona Park.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s blue collar. All the kids I hung around with, their dads worked with their hands, worked in a union, worked multiple jobs, then they gave you the shirt off their back. They were tough on you, taught you some discipline, but they showed that they loved you through their actions, not so much their words.”

He was influenced by legendary Gordon Tech coaches like Dick Versace, Tony Barone, and Steve Pappas.

He still shares the words of Pappas with his teams at DePaul Prep.

“He told us, and I remember distinctly – and I tell our team – when we’re having a rough practice, or we’re not getting along, look to your left and look to your right in that huddle after practice, these guys are going to be your best friends for the rest of your life,” Kleinschmidt said.

He played with a no-nonsense attitude, to go with his no-nonsense flattop haircut.  

“Those are the best years of my life, playing at Gordon Tech with those guys in that gym,” he said.   

In that gym, his No. 34 now hangs in the rafters, a number he chose to emulate two other hard-working sports legends.

“Walter Payton and Charles Barkley,” Kleinschmidt said. “Those were my two guys. Growing up as a kid. I loved who they were as players and their toughness, so yeah, I took No. 34.”

When it came time for college, he took his blue-collar mentality to the Blue Demons of DePaul university, where fans renamed the cheering sections “Kleinschmidt Kountry.”

Under coach Joey Meyer, he became a DePaul University basketball legend – the school’s first ever player to finish his career with 1,000 points, 500 rebounds, 100 steals, and 100 three-pointers.

“I wanted to stay home. I’ve got a big family, a lot of friends who supported me in high school, and I wanted to play in front of a hometown crowd. I love Chicago,” he said.

In a 1994 interview with WGN Sports anchor Dan Roan, he pondered his future. 

“If basketball doesn’t take me where I want to go, just lean on something I want to do, whether it be taking your job or something like that, but we’ll see what happens when the time comes,” he told Roan.

After playing overseas for more than a decade, he did get that basketball job, first as the director of Basketball operations at DePaul University under Coach Jerry Wainwright, who gave him his greatest insight into basketball.

“He said, ‘Coach, what do you think basketball is about?” Kleinschmidt said. “I drew up this sideline out of bounds play, and he laughed out loud, and he said, ‘it’s about relationships. It’s about relationships. You can’t coach a kid unless you know him.”

He knows his players – and they know their 52-year-old coach. He’s still that same fiery competitor, who played with passion and now coaches with heart.

“I’m still emotional,” he said. “I wear it on my sleeve, like I did a player. You got to be real as the kids say. You got to be consistent with it, and then when you build that relationship, they’ll run through a wall for you.”