Michaela Kleisinger is living a dream with University of Regina Cougars
Michaela Kleisinger grew up cheering for the University of Regina Cougars women's basketball team, for which she is now a fifth-year player.
by Rob VanstoneDespite being the most selfless of basketball players, Michaela Kleisinger doesn’t take a backseat to anyone at University of Regina Cougars home games.
The 22-year-old point guard is invariably in the front row at the Centre for Kinesiology, Health and Sport. If she isn’t sitting on the women’s basketball team’s bench during a respite in Canada West action, she is cheering on the U of R’s men’s squad alongside members of her family during the finale of a doubleheader.
The preferred seating is hardly anything new. Long before Kleisinger joined the Cougars in 2015, she sat with her parents and grandparents along the baseline, to the right of the south-end basket, and watched the games.
“I just moved from right there to right there,” Kleisinger says, pointing at her family’s accustomed seats and then to the bench, “and then I watch the men’s games from right there.”
Right above the “REGINA” label at the end of the court, suitably enough.
Kleisinger is a proud Reginan through and through — a home-grown success story who excelled for the Campbell Tartans before inevitably joining the Cougars.
“It has definitely been a dream come true,” she says, “and everything I hoped it would be.”
It was seemingly meant to be.
After all, Dean Kleisinger (Michaela’s father) and Jennifer Seaman — the wife of Cougars women’s basketball coach Dave Taylor — are distantly related.
“It’s a typical Regina thing,” Taylor says. “It’s not two degrees of separation. It’s two houses of separation.”
Consider, too, that Taylor and Kleisinger’s mother (Erin) were high school classmates at Campbell Collegiate. In fact, Taylor and the former Erin Stankov sat in the same row in Grade 9 English. As Taylor recalls it, there was one disagreement.
“I was probably telling her to pay attention because I was trying to learn the poetry,” Taylor says, unconvincingly. “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Erin Kleisinger can chuckle about it now.
“If you had asked me in Grade 9, ‘Is this guy who is sitting behind you going to hold your child’s life and career in your hands?’, I would have laughed,” she says.
“To have a daughter who wanted to play Cougar basketball for a team he coaches is like a full-circle moment. It’s just a reminder: Be nice to everybody, because you never know.”
Perpetually pleasant Michaela Kleisinger has certainly taken that philosophy to heart.
“She just cares about this program,” Taylor says. “She grew up caring about it and wanting to be a Regina Cougar. And she cares about the basketball community.
“She does a lot of different things in sport. Anybody who is involved in sport, she is very caring about. Anything our program touches, she is such a great representative.”
Kleisinger was first associated with the program long before she first donned No. 2 for the Cougars, who are to play host to the University of Alberta Pandas on Friday and Saturday (6 p.m., both nights, with men’s games to follow at 8 o’clock).
“I’ve known her since she was a little kid showing up at our Cougar camp, while bouncing the basketballs and yelling, ‘I love defence!’ ” Taylor says.
Even then, Kleisinger loved basketball in general, to the extent that she simply could not get enough of the sport.
“One of the vignettes I think of that so describes her is from when she was still really little,” Erin Kleisinger says.
“We asked her what she wanted to do for the summer. I remember getting out information about the various basketball camps and saying, ‘Which of these would you like to go to?’ She looked at me and said, ‘Can I go to all of them?’ She truly would spend five of her eight weeks of summer vacation in the gym.
“She was never the biggest kid. She was never the fastest kid. But she wanted to improve her skills and I think she is proof that hard work and setting your mind on something and putting in the hours can result in something.
“So, yeah, she was easy to entertain in the summer.”
Now she is entertaining the Cougars’ fans.
When the team last played at home, the 5-foot-7 Kleisinger became the first U of R player to register a triple-double since the Cougars joined Canada West in 2001.
Kleisinger had 12 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in a 92-46 victory over the University of Winnipeg Wesmen on Nov. 15. She followed up the next evening with 17 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists in the Cougars’ 84-51 victory. U Sports female-athlete-of-the-week honours soon followed.
The double triple-doubles were, of course, witnessed by the Kleisinger cheering section — Dean, Erin and three of Michaela’s grandparents (Laurie Stankov, Carol Kleisinger and Leonard Kleisinger).
The family support extends to road games, at which Dean and Erin are fixtures. In fact, Dean has missed only one of Michaela’s games — a pre-season contest — during her time with the Cougars.
“If we’re able to do it,” Erin says, “there’s nothing we’d rather do than watch her play.”
Playing basketball is an important part of Michaela’s hectic schedule, which includes her studies in kinesiology and regularly leading 45-minute cycling-related fitness programs as a “motivator” at Wheelhouse Cycle Club.
She is also motivated to remain closely involved with basketball after graduating from the Cougars at the end of this season. Ultimately, she would love to return to the U of R in a coaching capacity, ideally with credentials that include a master’s degree.
“I think I am going to have a really hard time leaving the Cougar program, but basketball is still definitely on the horizon,” she says. “Hopefully it brings me back here one day.”
If it does, she will have one of the most devoted cheering sections of any coach in U of R history.
“I joke with her, ‘What’s beyond proud?’ ” Erin Kleisinger says. “Whatever that is, that’s what we are. She’s a good kid. She has always been a good kid. There has never been a minute of trouble.
“I’m proud of her for her accomplishments, but I’m mostly proud of her because she’s a really good human being.”