Grad school adventure: Like daughter, like father
Keith Hunter, a former football coach, moved across the country to get his master’s degree alongside daughter Faith.
For a year, Faith Hunter and her dad, Keith, took classes, worked on projects and studied for tests together to get their master’s in sports coaching. (Photo by Logan Wallace)
Night class was just starting for a diverse cohort of master’s students in sports coaching. One student shared fiery “beef-flavored” snacks she found at an Asian market. Someone with a European accent took a nibble and reacted. Faith Hunter ’25 doesn’t go for foods that light up her mouth. So she settled into her seat as a man with a graying beard fist-bumped a nearby lacrosse player. Then the man circuited the room, checking in with students.
“Those two were on crutches,” Hunter says, pointing to other students. “He likes to make sure everybody is cool.”
The man was not the course instructor. He is Hunter’s father, Keith, a former player for the University of Iowa and Cleveland Browns, a college and high school football coach and master golfing instructor. And he was giving some seriously sweet dad vibes to fellow students.
Keith and Faith Hunter—a professional cheer coach and former member of Ohio State’s track team—might be the only father and daughter ever enrolled in the same Ohio State graduate program at the same time. For one year, they mostly took the same classes, worked on the same projects and crammed for exams together. He finished summer semester; she is set to graduate next year.
What makes someone pack up his life in Dallas, then relocate to Buckeye Country so he can go back to college at age 64? And what makes his daughter say yes to that? Ohio State Alumni Magazine spoke with Keith and Faith about their special bond.
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What motivated you to make such a big life change?
Keith: I wasn’t being as creative as a parent as I know I am. I thought that if I did something new, if I could get in [the sport coaching program] and be with Faith and be around my family—my ex-wife and my other daughter as well—I’d be able to give some things back to them that you don’t normally have the opportunity to do. I think that if some parents had the opportunity to do that with their kid, it would be so worth it. This is one of those experiences—it’s a “lifetime” type of thing.
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What do you recall about being a coach’s daughter?
Faith: He took me on some tours of different colleges. At Rutgers, I got to tour the sports facilities and wear a little badge. Including me in that was cool. When he was in North Carolina, he had some golf ranges. [He still owns them.] We used to ride the ball-clearing machine together, the golf cart that picks up all the balls. Then I helped him put the balls through the ball washer. Those are good memories.
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I love that your daughters had their own tiny golf clubs.
Keith: I taught Faith and Trinity how to swing, and they knew how to grip the club. If you asked a golf question, they knew how to answer it.
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I bet you’ve been coaching Faith for her entire life.
The Hunters chat during a master’s class, part of the College of Education and Human Ecology. (Photo by Logan Wallace) Keith: I mean, she’s teaching me. I didn’t know that much about computers, and to get through all the things that you need to do just for your classes, she’s having to teach me. I had to tell her, “Stop doing it for me and teach me.” I’m learning. She’s learning.
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As a cheer coach, do you find yourself repeating advice he gave?
Faith: Yes. He always told me that “perfect practice makes perfect.” And I tell my kids that. There’s a certain way you have to practice to not just build muscle memory, because sometimes muscle memory isn’t the best when things are always changing. In my sport, things are always changing.
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How did people respond to your choice to study at Ohio State?
Keith: I would say I’m going to grad school with my daughter. The first thing they say is, “Did you ask her? Did she want you to be with her?” Like I’m going to mess up her groove or something.
But people don’t realize that I’m a different dad. -
Has he cramped your style?
Faith: Not at all.
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Are your friends a tiny bit jealous, because he’s so attentive?
Faith: I don’t ever get that vibe from anybody. They just say, “That’s so cool.” It’s something they never heard of before. I think that he’s always done a lot for me, so I wasn’t super surprised, but I was very excited about it. He came because he’s always been a good dad.
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It takes a certain confidence to be among younger students.
Keith: I’m the oldest. I’m almost the age of the professor. … I encourage any older person not to be afraid to take classes with younger people. With technology today, it can be intimidating, but your experience and your knowledge will get you through anything.
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Has the experience been what you hoped?
Keith: Exactly what I was hoping for. We are close anyway, but we connected even more. Instead of me trying to tell her what to do, I get to talk with her about it. I love that part. The areas where I think that she can grow more, those conversations happen organically, because we are together and we talk all the time, compared to being on the phone and saying, “You need to do this”—that father type of thing.
