One would think just being a father to a pair of teenage girls would be hard enough. Well, try being their basketball coach and teacher, too.

Clearly, Auburn Mountainview’s Chris Carr relishes a challenge.

For the past two years, Carr – who is in his fifth season at the helm of the Lion girls basketball program – has coached his oldest daughter, Caitlin, 17, a junior post.

This year, the youngest Carr, sophomore guard Aly, 15, joined her sister on the Auburn Mountainview varsity squad.

As if that weren’t enough, Chris also teaches at the school, interacting daily with Aly and Caitlin in their academic lives.

According to Chris, the constant contact in different roles is a challenge made possible only by constant adherence to the task at hand.

“It’s been challenging for me to be a parent, coach and teacher to them at school,” Chris said. “You always have to remember what role you’re in.”

The sports part comes naturally to the Carrs.

Chris played basketball for Tim Cummings in high school, graduating from Auburn in 1984. Mom, Marla Carr, was a volleyball player for Eastern Washington.

In 1994, Chris begin his coaching career with the White River girls. Through his years in Buckley to coaching stints at Yelm and Kentlake and on to Auburn Mountainview, Caitlin and Aly have always been a part of Chris’ teams.

“They grew up in a gym,” Carr said. “I’ve always taken them to practice with me, whether it was the boys or the girls. They’d always run around with a ball in their hands.”

Aly said her earliest memories of the gym date to when her dad coached at Kentlake, and she tagged along.

“And I remember sweeping the floors at state,” she said.

“She used to come with me to state, and they’d put her to work,” Chris said. “She’d sit underneath the basket and have an awesome time with that. She’d be there all day, whether we were playing or not.”

Caitlin said that her earliest memories are of her dad leading the Hornets to an eighth-place finish at the 3A state tournament in 1996.

“I remember having a police escort to the Tacoma Dome because it was their first year making it to state (since 1985),” Caitlin said. “I got to ride on the bus with them.”

Once the girls began their basketball careers, playing AAU ball, Chris said he discovered how important it is to know when to be dad and when to be coach.

“When they play AAU, people always tell me ‘you’re awful quiet,’” Chris said. “One of the things I try to do is separate my roles. I’m not there as a coach, I’m there as a parent, to cheer them on and support them. I never talk to them about what their coach was doing or what they needed to do. I’m just there to support them as a parent, that’s my role, I choose to be a parent. Even now when we get home at night, I have to be a parent. I have to separate that from the basketball floor. When we get home, I’m a dad.”

For Chris, all passion and intensity when his team is on the floor, coaching his girls can be challenging.

“Sometimes I don’t do that as well as I want to,” he admitted. “I’ll get home and I’ll still be frustrated and angry at the outcome of the game. They kind of understand that nothing is personal when I walk off this floor. I love them to death, they’re my children, but on the floor sometimes I don’t like them very much as players, when they make mistakes. But that’s just part of being competitive. And we’re a competitive family, we’ve grown up in a competitive environment.”

In addition to making sure that he doesn’t allow one role to bleed into another, Chris said it is vital to make sure the girls understand the difficulty of being the coach’s kids.

“My kids have always earned what they’ve got,” Chris said. “I don’t want to be that parent who thinks their kid is better than they are. You have to prove that you belong out there. I always tell them they can’t be as good as, they have to be better than, others. I don’t want people looking at us and saying that they only play because they’re the coach’s kids.”

It’s a role Caitlin and Aly play very well, Chris said.

“They are two of 10, they know I have a greater responsibility in this program than to just my daughters,” Chris said. “They are a piece of the pie, but they are not the pie by any means. They’ve done a good job of understanding and accepting that. If Aly is not playing very well, like the other night when she had foul trouble against Enumclaw, she didn’t play very much. I have to make decisions that are going to benefit the other eight kids on the team, not just my daughters.”

Although Aly, who is in her first year on the varsity squad, said she is now comfortable with the parameters of the relationship, she confessed that it was hard to get over the first time her dad yelled at her on the court.

“When I was at Yelm, during the first summer tournament, he first yelled at me,” Aly said. “I was shocked. It was a high school type of yell, not middle school or AAU. It’s more intense than the other yells. It shocked me at first. Now I’m used to it.”

Caitlin agreed:

“When he’s coaching, he’s not dad, he’s Coach Carr,” she added. “He’s all business when he walks out on to the court. Then, when he gets home, he’s laughing and funny and joking around and stuff. When he gets to the gym, I’m not his daughter anymore. When I’m on the court, I’m his player. It took me a while to understand it.”

The girls also interact with their father as students at Auburn Mountainview. Aly has yet to take a class with her dad, but Caitlin has had him as an instructor in each of her three years at the school.

“It was hard at first because I couldn’t do anything wrong,” Caitlin said. “He’d always get e-mails, and he’d ask when I got home ‘what’d you do today?’ And he already knew what I’d done. I have to be really good, but I’ve gotten used to it. He hangs out and is cool with my friends and is just fun to be around. It’s not weird at all now.”

“I like it (having him in the school) because if I forget my lunch money, I can get lunch money,” Aly added. “So that’s good.”

Although everybody works hard at their roles, the Carrs agreed the key to the relationship dynamic is mom.

“She is a great mediator,” Chris said. “That’s another adjustment that I have to make. That’s mom, mama bear protecting her cubs. Sometimes when I get home, she’s got something to say to coach. And sometimes I take it personally, because I’m trying to do what’s best for everybody. But she’s still mom, and she’s there to protect them. She does a great job of understanding that I’m in a difficult position, so she doesn’t put me in one.”

At the end of the day, Chris said he’s happy to have the opportunity to be so involved in his daughter’s lives.

“It’s a great experience, I wish everybody could coach their kids,” he said.