|
Tracy
Dildy knows just about everybody. Well, it sure seems like that anyway. Dildy
knows everyone from Miami Heat point guard Tim Hardaway to the CTA bus driver.
“I have always been a very
approachable guy,” said Dildy.
Dildy has a minute set a side for
everybody: the phone is always ringing, the door is always being knocked on and
Dildy just smiles. There is no doubt why he is known as “the Mayor.”
Dildy’s friendly attitude can be
attributed to his late mother Vernita
who passed away a year ago. Despite being a single mother, Vernita would always
have time for her five children. She never missed one of Dildy’s games,
despite performing two roles of being a father and a mother to her five
children.
“I was never one of those guys that
thought I was better than the other person, and people remember that,” Dildy
said. “I have never really burned any bridges and that’s the way my mother
raised me.”
Dildy, who is serving his third year as
assistant coach of the men’s basketball team knows Chicago like the back of
his hand.
He was introduced into the Chicago
basketball spotlight as a freshman at King High School and ever since then he
has been part of the Chicago basketball scene. When Dildy was in eighth grade,
he was promised by King’s head coach Landon Cox that he would start as a
freshman.
“When he promised me the opportunity
to play varsity as a freshman, that pretty much sold me,” said Dildy. And that
pretty much established King High School as an Illinois high school basketball
powerhouse where they would only lose eight games in four years while Dildy
starred at the point.
After graduating from King, Dildy left
Chicago to go to San Diego State, where he played for Smokey Gaines, who was a
former Globetrotter.
After Dildy’s sophomore season he
became homesick and Gaines resigned. That sent Dildy back to the city where he
belonged.
Dildy played his junior and senior
season at University of Illinois at Chicago, under head coach Bob Hallberg, a
place where Dildy would later set his mark as an assistant coach.
When Dildy arrived at UIC, the program
did not have much of a reputation, but give Dildy a couple of years to work his
magic and the unthinkable would happen. Dildy helped lure 1991 Illinois High
School Player of the Year Sherell Ford of Proviso East into the program, where
they would come up just short of making the NCAA tournament in 1995 during
Ford’s senior season.
Ford would later break the UIC scoring
record. In 1994, Dildy helped lure Westinghouse recruit Mark Miller who would
help UIC to the best finish in UIC history, where they would make the NCAA
tournament.
With Dildy’s help, UIC started
attracting the top Chicago recruits. Antoine Walker, currently with the Boston
Celtics, and Rashard Griffith, who played at the University of Wisconsin, both
gave serious considerations to attending the university while King High
School’s Thomas Hamilton, who had a short-lived NBA career, was enrolled in
the school, but later dropped out.
Dildy strives on challenges. When UIC
and DePaul looked like they were just about dead, Dildy helped resurrect both
programs.
“I love being a part of the
beginning,” Dildy said. “Chicago kids like that challenge, and they like to
be known as the guys that built the program. They love that.” |