“He had a national championship T-shirt on — it was probably just as big as he was — and he’s out there running around with the cheerleaders and jumping, and all of a sudden he trips and falls and just wipes out in the middle of the court,” Smith said. “It was the cutest thing I remember about the national championship game.”
Of all the stories he’s heard, Hatchell says his favorite is the time he played one-on-one with former Tar Heel standout George Lynch, but he doesn’t remember that one either.
What he does remember is that he had a bunch of sisters growing up — 12 at all times, to be exact — and that, despite being surrounded by basketball, he didn’t like it when he was younger.
Basketball meant his parents stayed busy. His father, Carl, was the head coach at Meredith College before coaching Van’s high school team for three years.
But the bug eventually bit him and he fell in love with the game. Van always had a gym to go to and all those sisters to learn from.
“I remember Stephanie Lawrence, who played on my mom’s national championship team, was the first person who taught me how to do a crossover,” Van said. “Coretta Brown taught me how to do an in-and-out and to really sell it. Nikki Teasley taught me how to do a fake pass.”
The more he played, the more he realized how much he actually knew about basketball. All the hours he spent watching the game had made a difference.
“He’s not the best athlete or the quickest player out there, but a lot of times he’s the smartest,” Sylvia Hatchell said. “He sees what’s going to happen before it happens.”
By the time Van got to high school he started setting serious goals for himself, one of which was to play basketball at UNC.
With dad on the sidelines, Van enjoyed a lot of success on the court. He was an all-conference selection in each of his last three seasons — the team MVP for two of them — and was named to the all-state team as a senior at Cressent Christian Academy.
Van knew none of that was going to earn him a basketball scholarship to UNC, but he also didn’t know how hard it would be to make the team as a walk-on.
“My freshman year (at UNC) I made the JV team and it was the first time in my life I’d ever been the worst player on a team,” he said. “That year I realized that, if this was a goal I had, I really needed to start working on it.”
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Year-by-year Van improved his shooting, conditioning and work ethic. His sophomore campaign with the JV team saw him blossom from end-of-the-bench player to the second-leading scorer, but Van still wasn’t good enough to make the varsity team a year later.
He vowed to do whatever it took to make the team as a senior. The first step was to join his mom’s practice squad and compete against the women’s team every day.
“Being in high school, college girls can still push you a little bit. When I was a junior and senior I could kind of beat them, and once I got to college it was easy to beat them,” Van said.
“They probably wouldn’t admit to that, but I’ve always had good people to compete against.”
Last summer is when he really ramped up his routine. In addition to having a personal trainer, Van ran three to five miles per day, put himself on a strict diet and spent a lot of time in the gym, taking close to 1,000 shots per day for nearly three hours.
Thousands of sweat-drenched hours in an empty gym have translated into a total of 11 on-court minutes as a member of the varsity team in front of thousands of fans in the Smith Center.
Van has appeared in seven games this season — all of which come near the tail end of lopsided North Carolina victories. He’s hit one free throw and grabbed two rebounds in his time on the floor.
“The first time I ran out of the tunnel,” Van said, “you have that jersey on your chest and you run out, people are cheering, and you’re just like, ‘Oh yeah.’ It was big. That’s one thing I’d always dreamed about doing.”
But he isn’t the only Hatchell who’s gotten more enjoyment from UNC men’s games this year. Sylvia said she looks forward to the last minute of a Tar Heel romp more than the rest of the game.
“He’s my son and any second he’s out there he’s in heaven,” she said. “I’m proud of all the things he did. It was a great journey he went on to get where he is now.”
All the time Van spent around basketball showed him how hard he had to work to reach his goals, but Williams said he sees even more reflected in the young player’s game.
“He’s been around the table and talked about making sacrifices and knows what’s important is the team,” Williams said. “I think that insight helps him be a better teammate.”
As his short-lived UNC varsity career enters the final stretch, Van said he’s not sure where he’ll be in a year. But he’s accomplished all the goals he’s set for himself thus far.
And for now, he’s just enjoying the moment.
Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.
