PEMBROKE — Throughout his lengthy and successful basketball coaching career, Kelvin Sampson has seen the benefits paid for athletes by paying extra attention to nutrition, helping their performance and recovery.

Now, he and his wife Karen, both UNC Pembroke alumni, have helped to bring a Division-I level resource to the Division-II athletic program at their alma mater.

UNCP dedicated the Karen L. & Kelvin Sampson Nutrition Station Friday, an area adjacent to the department’s weight training facility that provides needed nutritional materials for student athletes to supplement their strength and conditioning work.

“It just gives us a leg up,” UNCP athletic director Dick Christy said. “Not only fighting where student-athletes might have some deficiencies in what they have access to, whether it’s their meal plan or what they have in their apartment. But just the timing of nutrition and protein and caloric intake, trying to get the right things in their body to fuel the right way.”

“I don’t know how you can have a balanced life if you don’t give back, and Karen and I are always looking for projects,” said Kelvin Sampson, who graduated from UNCP in 1978 and has coached four Division-I men’s basketball programs including his current position at the University of Houston. “Doing projects in brick and mortar is fine, but there’s some things you can do that’s going to serve the student-athletes here for a long time, that can be added on to it. We’ve seen the importance of nutrition at just about every school that we’ve coached at, and we thought this was something we could bring here too at UNCP.”

Karen Sampson, who has served on the UNCP Board of Trustees for the last six years, had conversations with Christy which she said were “little pebbles in the water” that “went through and made some ripples” about the idea.

“When Dick was explaining his vision for this, I thought ‘this is exactly what I want to be involved with,” Karen Sampson said. “This is something I want to see.’ Because it’s so important.”

As part of the process, Karen Sampson says she did an informal survey of Kelvin’s current Houston players, and “almost to a man” they said they use the Cougars’ nutrition center extensively; Emanuel Sharp told her “all the time, all day long.”

“That little seed then began to grow, and as it got more and more to fruition, I told Dick, keep me informed, let me know where you are, and let me know when you’re ready, because this is something we’re going to do,” Karen Sampson said.

As part of her involvement, Karen Sampson made sure that the resource would be available to all UNCP athletes, both men’s and women’s, in every sport.

“Having somebody that’s been on the inside of an athletic department for a long time, at the highest level, that’s a heck of a person to have in your corner,” Christy said. “She’s been just a great advocate for our athletes.”

The station was named for the Sampsons “as a result of the continued philanthropy” by the two Pembroke natives, a UNCP press release stated; they are longtime Braves Club members and have also established the John W. (Ned) and Eva B. Sampson Endowed Scholarship for men’s basketball in memory of Kelvin’s parents. The Sampsons were also retroactively given the Braves Club Members of the Year award, which was announced earlier this year at an event they were unable to attend.

“We have other projects in mind that we think the student-athletes can benefit from, from our experience at other places, and we just want to share them with a university that’s meant so much to us,” Kelvin Sampson said. “I talk to our kids all the time and tell them don’t ever forget where you came from, it’s important. The town of Pembroke and this university, my mother and father, my family that I grew up with shaped me in a lot of ways, and I’m very proud that I can call a place like this home.”

Karen Sampson chose to include the “L” initial to represent her maiden name of Karen Lowry as an indirect way to honor her late parents, Willie and Sue Lowry, as well.

“I was especially pleased that they allowed me to put my maiden name, the ‘L’, that’s kind of brought my parents into it,” she said. “So it’s both of us, so Kelvin of course, with our first names, but the last name being Sampson, but also that ‘L’ signified my parents.”

The nutrition station includes items such as protein shakes, bars and powders, smoothies and fruit for athletes’ use, particularly surrounding their workouts nearby. It also includes educational materials to better inform athletes about nutrition and the relationship between that and their athletic performance.

“A fueling station for me just emphasizes athletic recovery, athletic performance. It’s just helping our athletes gain an edge, get a second gear on our opponents to help us go win more championships,” said Cory Minnie, UNCP’s assistant athletic director for athletic performance. “We’ve had it up and running for a little bit now, but now we’re officially doing the ribbon cutting. Just being able to see our athletes utilize it over the last year or so now, and you can just kind of see the success we’ve had since we implemented that as well.”

“With the nutrition station here, it’s going to allow us to recover in a more developed way than we would be able to on our own,” Braves women’s basketball player Malea Garrison said. “It’ll give us more options, and help all of our student-athletes just recover and be the best that they can be for their seasons and their games.”

Kelvin Sampson’s involvement at UNCP has long gone far beyond that of simply a “famous alumnus” listed as a university factoid to providing support, both moral and financial, to the Braves program from afar. The UNCP Athletics Hall of Famer also invited the Braves men’s basketball team to play a preseason exhibition game last season at Houston, where he has been the head coach since 2014.

“It’s one thing to post a famous alum in your annals as somebody that played for you, but when they text you and they know what the game outcome was and they’re sending you encouraging stuff and they keep up with how your teams are doing, that’s a whole different level,” Christy said. “That’s something that our current student-athletes can actually connect with, and I think you heard Kelvin say in his comments, this is about them and our future.”

Kelvin Sampson has earned 763 wins as a head basketball coach at the collegiate level with stops at Montana Tech, Washington State, Oklahoma, Indiana and Houston; he has led the Cougars to the Sweet 16 in five consecutive NCAA Tournaments and reached the Final Four in 2021, the second appearance in his career. Among his many accolades are National Coach of the Year honors from the Associated Press, National Association of Basketball Coaches and U.S. Basketball Writers Association, winning each award twice and claiming all three for the 2023-24 season, in which the Cougars won the Big 12 regular-season championship.

The Sampsons were also scheduled to attend Kelvin’s 50th anniversary high school reunion for the Pembroke Senior High class of 1974, held on Friday evening.