Colette Abbott will leave a lasting impression at USD

Colette Abbott was not so much the wife of the president at the University of South Dakota as she was part of the fabric of the school. Nowhere was that more apparent than in her enthusiasm for Coyote athletics.

Jim Abbott and his wife were an inseparable pair at Coyote sporting events to the extent that if you saw the president at a basketball game without her, you could conclude there was an unavoidable conflict that kept her from attending. At least as often you’d see Colette there, without her husband, when Jim was on the road for work.

These were not passive “appearances” set up to hobnob with boosters. Colette Abbott knew the student-athletes and coaches personally. She enthusiastically supported their efforts in good times and bad and she took great joy in witnessing their successes. In coaching parlance of our times, the university’s first lady was all in.

“This is very sad,” said USD women’s track coach Lucky Huber. “We all know people die all the time, but this one is really, really sad. I think the whole campus is still in a little bit of shock. Colette was never one just to show up for things. She cared about all the student-athletes and she had great interaction with us all.”

Wednesday morning, USD athletic director David Herbster gave the Abbotts a tour of the Coyote Sanford Sports Center, the basketball arena and training facility that will be opening this summer. Hours later, Colette, who’d been diagnosed with cancer last week, was gone.

“She was in good spirits, looking great, smiling from ear-to-ear,” Herbster said. “She couldn’t have been more excited about the place. She asked a lot of questions about where people would be sitting, wanting to know about how it was all going to work – she couldn’t wait to be there for that first game.”

Good spirits. Looking great. Smiling from ear-to-ear. To those who knew her well, those were pretty much constants, and recognizable immediately to those meeting her for the first time.

Toward the end of the hiring process for a new men’s basketball coach, Craig Smith and his family met with the Abbotts at their home in Vermillion. They were strangers, and the official offer of a job was yet to come.

“It had the potential to be uneasy, but we connected immediately,” Smith said. “We had a great time with them. My kids loved her hot fudge sundaes -- they talked about them all the time. I’m not sure how she did it but they were amazing. When I was offered the job later that night, I remember feeling good about it because I felt good about the Abbotts.”

The rapport continued after the Smiths moved to town with Colette helping Smith’s wife Darcy through the transition process for the family. It was obvious the role of a university president’s wife in a small town suited her.

“She and Darcy really hit it off,” Smith said. “And she had me and the kids at hello, too. She had a nurturing way about her, but also very elegant. She could relate to anybody. It didn’t matter whether you were having a good day or a bad day when you talked to Colette, you left feeling better about yourself. You don’t run into a lot of people in life who can do that. She was one of them.”

On the topic of relating to anybody, how many university presidents’ wives volunteer to work at track meets?

“She’d be sitting down there with all the old-timers,” Huber said. “She’d be working as timer, counting laps, things like that. It was typical of how much she cared about what we were doing.”

She was a prolific marathoner and was deeply involved in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. It was one of the many charities to which she devoted her talents. Huber worked alongside her on the Komen event, which originated in Vermillion, and then moved to Sioux Falls.

“At first I knew her just based on conversations we’d have at university things,” Huber said. “But I really got to see what kind of person she is when we were working on the Komen Race for the Cure.

“She wanted that event to be something special, not just for USD but for Vermillion. My impression is that she was like that with all the charities she worked with.”

She was often credited by her husband for getting him up to speed on his knowledge of sports. It is a recurring joke Jim Abbott tells about himself that he didn’t know a football from a basketball until it became part of his job to make the distinction -- and he was able to pull it off only with help from his wife.

Eric Robertson, a senior basketball player with the Coyotes, had developed a rapport with the pair over his time at USD. She was hard to miss in the first row.

“I had few buddies from the University of Minnesota down here with me for a weekend one time,” Robertson said. “Colette and President Abbott came over and we talked. They were both calling me ‘ERob’. When they left, my friends asked me who they were. I said ‘That’s the president and his wife.’ They were amazed. They’d only seen their president on television, if they could recognize him at all. And then here at USD, the president and his wife are calling me ‘ERob.’”

While watching countless hours of video of his team playing at the DakotaDome, Smith would inevitably notice Colette reacting to the game at courtside.

“She was yelling encouragement to the players, standing up and encouraging the fans, yelling at the refs – it was so much fun to see that passion shine through.”

Her husband would joke that if Colette witnessed a Coyote player pulling out a pistol and shooting an opposing player, ‘She would stand up and tell the ref that wasn’t a foul,’ according to Herbster.

“It was never malicious, just a passion for basketball,” Herbster said. “That was how she approached life.”

USD will host a memorial service for Colette Abbott on Monday at 11 a.m. in Aalfs Auditorium in Slagle Hall. The family is hosting an open house on Sunday at the president’s residence from 2-5 p.m. All are welcome. The family requests that memorial gifts be directed to the James W. and Colette Abbott scholarship at the USD Foundation or to the Children’s Home Society.

“She’s going to be missed,” Herbster said. “But with Colette, she left such a positive impression on so many people, I don’t think you could truly say she’s gone.”