As the father-in-law of UC Davis head football coach Dan Hawkins, Robert Hokanson will fly with the team charter plane into Grand Forks this weekend and wear Aggie blue to the Alerus Center.
The 82-year-old will also be wearing green socks because the UND homecoming game applies to Hokanson, too. UND and UC Davis play at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Hokanson played basketball and ran track at UND and was selected to the school's all-1950's basketball team. He was a captain of both teams in the 1958-59 season and an all-North Central Conference basketball selection in 1958.
A native of Morris, Minn., Hokanson played in the Minnesota state tournament as a senior in high school and received a letter and walk-on opportunity from UND basketball coach Louis Bogan.
At UND, he lived in a residential setup under the bleachers of Memorial Stadium, a facility the UND football team still uses for locker rooms, coaching offices and outdoor practices. Memorial Stadium was the primary home to UND football from 1927 to 2000.
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"We were at the south end with mostly basketball and football guys," Hokanson said. "The north end was hockey players. It was a unique place to be. We would hunt rats under the stadium. It was really different. Most of the athletes living there were low-income students, and I recall most of our meals were composed of fried eggs with popcorn for dessert. I think we had four or five rooms with six or eight people. It was kind of like a dorm. It was some cool guys in there."
From 1955-59, Hokanson, who now lives in Happy Camp, Calif., was a UND athlete and mentored by legendary UND coaches Bogan, Glenn "Red" Jarrett, Frank Zazula and Harold "Pinky" Kraft. After graduation, he went to teach and coach in California, where he spent 38 years at the same school before retiring in 1998.
Dan Hawkins was a star athlete at Happy Camp's league rival -- Big Valley High School. He met Robert's daughter, Misti, while they were attending College of the Siskiyous in Weed, Calif. Dan was a running back for the Eagles.
After graduating from the junior college, Dan and Misti married and moved to Davis, where Dan was a running back for the Aggies. From there, Dan and Misti have gone through Dan's coaching stops at Willamette University (Ore.), Boise State, Colorado and then Davis.
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After being fired at Colorado during the 2010 season, Hawkins spent six seasons as a college football analyst for ESPN. He also had a brief stint as head coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL in 2013.
Hawkins returned to his alma mater in 2016. The Aggies were 5-6 and eighth in the Big Sky Conference in his first season back in 2017, then went 10-3 and 7-1 (tied for first in the Big Sky) during the 2018 season. The Aggies lost in the FCS quarterfinals.
This season, Davis is ranked No. 12 in the latest FCS poll, starting the season 2-2 with losses to nationally ranked North Dakota State and Montana.
Robert was back in Grand Forks for UND's all-decade basketball team inductions in 2005. His wife, Diann, had a sister that lived in Grand Forks, too, so he's been back from time to time.
"I just wish I could be there for three or four more days, but we fly in Friday and leave Saturday," Hokanson said. "It's homecoming, so maybe Saturday morning we can jump around to some of the good, old places."
