Phan takes over at Frank Phillips Univ

What started as a heartbreaking phone call eventually became a once in a lifetime opportunity for Tri-parish native and now Frank Phillips College men’s basketball coach Vu Phan.

On a late July afternoon last year, Phan received a call from his boss and longtime friend Chad Cline.

Cline was the men’s basketball coach at Frank Phillips College in Borger, Texas.

Phan was his assistant coach.

During the conversation, Cline told Phan he had been asked to resign from his position after spending several seasons with the team. Phan was on his staff for two of those seasons.

“It was just a devastating phone call at first,” Phan said. “We had a team lined up for the next year, we had players signed, we had everything. We just had a superstar team and when he gave me that call, I was just thinking to myself, ‘What am I going to do?’ My boss told me that he pushed for me to be the next coach, but he said he really didn’t know what they would do, so I was pretty worried.”

Phan hung up with Cline and made another call n this time to his athletics director, John Green.

This one wasn’t nearly as bad.

“I got off the phone with my boss and I called my Athletic Director and I asked him, ‘Sir, do I really have a shot at this?’” Phan said. “And he told me, ‘Vu, you’re my guy. I like everything about you and we’re going to try and make this happen,’ so the AD pushed for me for about a week and then about a week and a half or two weeks later I found out I’d officially take over. It’s just crazy how something so tragic at first turned into something really good. And honestly if people asked me if I had it to do over again, I’d probably tell them no, because I wouldn’t want to risk the chance of losing my job.”

Phan is in his first season as a head coach after spending several seasons as an assistant at both Frank Phillips and Colby Community College in Kansas.

The Cut Off native said the road to coaching wasn’t necessarily a part of a specific plan, but rather a blur that mixes a little bit of fate and a lot of ambition along the way.

Phan said he initially wanted to play basketball, himself, but standing well below 6-feet-tall, he learned quickly that wouldn’t be an option.

“Coming out of high school, I wanted to do just a million things,” Phan said. “Everyone wants to be a doctor or a lawyer and everything like that. For me, at one point, I wanted to be a film producer or a movie producer. I just wanted to do all kinds of stuff. I really didn’t know out of high school. I was just the average kid wanting to do something big, wanting to get my name out.”

From juggling all of his potential dreams, Phan said in college, he found himself working at the Mall of Louisiana in Baton Rouge.

After several 50-hour weeks, he knew it was time to move on to something different.

“I knew I had to make another move soon,” Phan said. “When I hit 20, I just knew I had to make a decision. I knew I had to do something to make me happy.”

That’s where coaching came into the fold.

Phan got thrust into the profession by his older brother Giang Phan who was coaching at Colby Community College at the time.

It was Giang’s influence that landed Phan onto the bench, giving him a job on John Woods’ staff at Colby Community College.

From there, Phan worked his way up to his current position, where he is anchoring the 8-9 Plainsman.

He’s doing so with some Louisiana and even Tri-parish flare, too, as he’s recruited and signed four Louisiana players, including former Terrebonne High School standout, Jerrodd Brown.

How that came to fruition? Another phone call, of course.

“One of my old high school buddies, Todd Pierce, who’s a coach at South Lafourche, let me know about this kid at Terrebonne and he told me that I should check him out when I went home for Christmas,” Phan said. “So I went home and was in Raceland because I had a friend there, so I went and catch Terrebonne’s game and I was impressed. I liked his body and his athleticism. … I just stayed up with him. I didn’t know if I was going to sign him or not, but I was definitely interested. … But I came back down there and I took my head coach to see him in a big, open gym and he really played well in front of my head coach and he said, ‘Man, he’s a steal if we can get him,’ so he’s basically an under the radar kid.”

So with one season almost done as a head coach, what might the future hold for the 25-year-old head coach?

Phan said the ultimate goal is to advance to become an assistant coach or a head coach at the Division I level.

But for now, he’s happy where he’s at in life n coaching basketball for a living.

“I’m a young, Asian coach,” Phan said. “I’m 25-years-old, I’m probably the youngest coach in the country. I’m the only Asian coach that I know out there. I’m sure there’s someone else out there somewhere, but for me to get my head coaching start here, it’s great. All I’ve got to do is just hang around long enough and I’ll try to do some big things.”

Cut Off native and Frank Phillips College basketball coach Vu Phan paces the sidelines during a game last season. Phan is in his first season coaching the Plainsman and hopes to continue to further advance his coaching career. COURTESY PHOTO