When G.E. Coleman struggled with a math problem in elementary school, his parents knew just what to do.

They framed it in basketball terms — what are two fouls plus two more? — and, inevitably, the solution was not long in coming.

“He lived for basketball,” his mother, Teresa, said.

You could say the 31-year-old Coleman’s path to becoming the men’s basketball coach at Hawaii Hilo, where his appointment awaits approval from the chancellor, began about the time he was first able to hoist a basketball in his native Washington state.

“I think he went to his first (basketball) camp at age 2,” Teresa said. After that, his grandparents “used to say, ‘if it didn’t bounce, he didn’t care about it,’” Teresa said.

As a 5-year-old, G.E. sat on the bench of Juanita High, where his father, Gil, was the coach. He’d crawl through players’ legs to watch Dad draw plays on the floor. Soon he was diagramming and offering up his own plays.

At Central Washington University, where his father also coached, he was a fixture at Nicholson Pavilion, taking the bus after elementary school to help out at practices. Players called the 4-foot, 6-inch youngster their “13th man.” 

“It has long been his dream to be a head coach at the college level,” said Greg Sparling, the head coach at Central Washington, where Coleman was the associate head coach. “To do it at the Division II level with Hilo is a huge honor for him since he grew up in the sport.”

He shadowed his father to games and practices, camps and clinics, you name it. So much that Gil used to joke that he saved a fortune on child care. But some of those savings went into repairing the casualties of his many front-room nerf basketball games in the house.

Pictures from the Ellenburg (Wash.) Record newspaper show father and son sitting next to each other with identical wide-eyed and open-mouthed attention during a tense moment in a CWU game. And while G.E.’s friends talked hopefully of someday becoming astronauts, firemen, policemen or athletes, he was unwavering. “All he ever wanted to be was a basketball coach, like his father,” Teresa said.

When Gil died in 1993 of pneumonia, G.E. was 12 and proceeded to grip his dream even harder. “It was a hard time for him,” said Sparling, who became his father figure. “Fortunately, he had basketball.”

He became a three-year letterman and two-time team captain at Onalaska High, where he won “most inspirational” and “best hustle” awards. Then, while attending Central Washington, he went about paying his dues as a volunteer and student coach, working his way up to an assistant at Eastern Washington and CWU.

“He’s ready, definitely ready (to be a head coach),” Sparling said. “I mean, he’s got a great basketball mind and has been working for this his whole life.”

That his appointment at Hilo could come in this, the week of what would have been his father’s 57th birthday, would be especially poignant.

“His dad would have been — and always was — extremely proud of him,” Teresa said.

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.