What does it look like when a college basketball coach signs his own son to play for him? At Vanderbilt, it looks a lot less like nepotism and a lot more like a father trying to make up for lost time. Throughout his career, Mark Byington has coached hundreds of players. But the one he will look forward to coaching most is his son.

Chase Byington, the only known child of the Commodores head coach, signed to play college basketball under his father at Vanderbilt. He will join the program in the summer, expected to serve in a sacrificial role as a scout team member.

Who Is Chase Byington and What Makes Him Special?

Chase Byington has grown up in basketball gyms his entire life. His father, who was an assistant at the College of Charleston, took him to his first game when he was just 5 weeks old. Since then, he has gone on to attend more games than he could probably count across all the schools Mark Byington has coached.

Now, Chase is a 6-foot-3 guard who spent his senior season at Ensworth High School in Nashville, averaging 3.7 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 0.4 assists as a reserve. His numbers are not as great. And Chase himself would not be expecting to get meaningful minutes at a Division I school under normal circumstances. But his path to Vanderbilt was never about the stats or minutes. 

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According to reports, Mark Byington offered his son a scholarship after consulting veteran coaches like Tom Izzo and Kelvin Sampson. Both coaches also previously coached their own sons. The role Chase will step into, however, is not a glamorous one. Byington calls it “sacrificial.” Chase will essentially be the program’s 15th man, serving on the scout team and helping simulate opponents in practice.

But beyond the scout team role, there is a more personal reason behind Chase’s signing. The demands of coaching meant that Chase grew up watching his father from a distance more often than not. So this signing is also about a father making a deliberate choice to stop missing out on his son’s life. As Byington himself put it: “I want four more years with him because of all the things that I’ve had to miss for the first 18 years of his life.”

Being a coach’s son, Chase has had to face certain expectations and scrutiny that most players never experience. He was the most heckled player in high school basketball in Nashville. At Ensworth High School, rival student sections made it their business to get under his skin. As his high school coach, Bradley Pierson, put it, “He kinda has a little bit of a target on his back.” But Chase has never changed his approach in response. He laughs off the idea that he has done anything to deserve the treatment. “Not that I know of,” he says.

And perhaps that ability to tune out the noise is exactly why he’s the right fit for the role his father has in mind. But even if things do not go exactly as planned, Mark Byington will not consider this a failure. Because for the next four years, he gets to be with his son every single day.

How Has Family Shaped Byington’s Coaching at Vanderbilt?

Mark Byington’s career as a college basketball coach is littered with an impressive array of achievements. For Byington, fatherhood is among the things that made those achievements possible. As he puts it, “I think I became a way better coach when I became a father.”

Mark married his wife, Christy, in 2007, and their son, Chase, was born soon after. But before that, he only saw the players on his roster simply as athletes with a job to do. Fatherhood changed that perspective entirely. As he explained: “When you’re a father, you realize that who you’re coaching, somebody else feels the same way about them that I do about my son.” 

It is a perspective shift that has shaped everything about the way he operates. And that includes how he runs the Vanderbilt program. For example, his assistant Rick Ray’s sons are regularly in the bleachers at Memorial Gymnasium. Director of Basketball Operations Andy Farrell’s daughters are also familiar faces around the facility and have been on road trips with the program. As Farrell puts it, “Being a dad himself, he understands the sacrifices that are often made by the family unit, and he welcomes family into every aspect of the program.”

For Byington, there are no walls between being a father and being a coach. And perhaps, there’s no better way to literally show that philosophy than signing his own son just to spend more time with him.