It was never a formal agreement. There was no contract, no spoken pledge. This was, after all, a mother and her three kids. But as it played out over almost a dozen years, there clearly was a deal of sorts between Kimberly Gant and her children, one that went something like this:
I will do the best job a single mother can to help you fulfill your potential. I will put you in the best neighborhood and best schools I can afford, and I will drive as often and as far as necessary to get you to athletic practices and watch you compete.
You, in turn, will stay out of trouble, get good grades and become positive, productive adults.
The kids are now 19, 17 and 13, so the final returns aren’t in. But it’s already abundantly clear that all sides are keeping their parts of this bargain. That includes middle child Teah, an Oswego senior and one of Illinois’ top girls basketball players.
Her brother Mark, who sometimes goes by his middle name of Darius, is a sophomore at Illinois Wesleyan, where he plays for the top-ranked NCAA Division III team in the country. Brother Sean is in 7th grade and also plays hoops.
It has been far from easy for Kimberly Gant to get this job done. She was divorced about the time Teah was in 1st grade and, with inconsistent financial support from her ex-husband, has struggled to make ends meet.
It would have been cheaper to stay in Aurora, where Kimberly grew up, but they lived on a street so rife with gang and drug activity and drive-by shootings that Teah was afraid to cross the street to a friend’s house.
So about the time of the divorce, the family moved to a house in Oswego, in a subdivision that couldn’t have been more different from Aurora’s East Side.
“I was trying to find a place to live where the kids could get a decent education and that was affordable and safe,” said Kimberly, a claims representative for an insurance company. “It was originally planned it would be a two-income situation, but that never materialized.
“It was kind of through the grace of God we’ve been here so long by ourselves.”
Mark and Teah got involved in sports, including club basketball, and their mom paid a price in fees, gas money and driving time, especially after Teah joined the Chicago Hoops Express as an 8th-grader.
Hoops Express practices near the Loop two to three times a week, which meant a one-hour, one-way drive, two hours on Fridays when Kimberly had to battle rush-hour traffic to make a 6 p.m. session.
There were times Kimberly would drop Mark at a club practice, drive Teah to practice, wait until it finished and then circle back to get Mark. When schedules conflicted too much, a teammate’s parent would help out.
Games were a similar hodgepodge, particularly when Mark and Teah both played for Oswego. Kimberly sometimes wound up watching the first half of one kid’s game and the second half of another’s, and she still remembers a weekend spent bouncing between Janesville, Wis., and Chicago as Teah and Mark competed in club tournaments.
There have been fewer conflicts since Mark entered college, though seeing him play often entails a two- to three-hour ride.
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“Really her sole mission is just her kids,” Hoops Express director Jerald Davis said. “She devotes all her time just to making sure they are taken care of.”
Kimberly never minded the travel because she believed sports made her kids better people. Personal development, especially in school, was her No. 1 priority, and she believes Hoops Express helped Teah, shy by nature, develop off the court.
“My main thing is to get a good education so you can make choices in life,” she said. “My main goal for all my kids is for them to be self-sufficient.”
Teah is a self-starter in the classroom, where she has a 4.5 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale and is in the National Honor Society. In the gym the 5-foot-10-inch guard is a four-year varsity starter and likely four-time conference player of the year who is averaging about 26 points a game this season and will leave Oswego as the school’s all-time leader in scoring and steals.
“She’s a hard worker, a great kid and a great teammate,” Oswego coach Mike Schnable said.
Teah has accomplished all of this despite having virtually no contact with her father.
“It does get to me sometimes,” she said, “but I try not to think about it.”
Early in her junior year, Teah accepted an athletic scholarship offer from Wisconsin. She said she wanted to attend a Big Ten school with a good engineering program and be close enough to home that her mom could attend her games.
The scholarship is a relief to Kimberly, who has her hands full paying a portion of Mark’s college expenses.
Her children understand and appreciate all of their mother’s sacrifices. Ask Teah about it, and she and Kimberly, seated together on a living room couch, glance in opposite directions, realizing that eye contact will precipitate an emotional meltdown.
“It’s hard sometimes just to see her struggle,” Teah said, eyes misting anyway as she paused to keep control of her emotions. “Sometimes I just feel like I want to do more, but I can’t, so I guess for me just to do well in basketball and grades is a way to say thank you.”
It is, of course, the best way. Kimberly is more interested in results than gratitude, and she knows she’s getting exactly what she bargained for.
“They have done their part to help me as a single parent,” she said of her children. “I see how things could have been, and I’m glad they stayed on the right track and made me proud of them. I don’t look at it as sacrificing my time. They bring me joy.”
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