Deborah Diamond Edwards knows.
Your favorite treat? She'll bake it. Your birthday? She'll remember it. Whom you should date? She'll tell you.
And if you don't return her phone calls, she'll worry about you, and call you until you do call back.
The 36-year-old director of the Gopher women's basketball office doesn't yet have children of her own, but, like any real mom, she has a keen sense for when her charges are sick, sad or troubled.
"She just has a knack for knowing something about everything," assistant coach Kelly Roysland said. "She's the mom in the office."
Edwards has made soup for the entire office. She delivers homemade chicken pot pie to all new moms and invites everyone to Thanksgiving dinner. If you're under the weather, she insists that you go home, then she'll call you later to check in.
"I want people to be comfortable and in their happy place," she said. "Little things make a difference."
But those "little things" have gotten her into trouble now and then. "Yes, there are times when people don't tell me information because they don't want me to be motherly," she admitted.
But it's the interns — whom she's mothered maybe a little too much — with whom she maintains the strongest connections.
"I had one class to finish before I graduated college," said Rori Carlo, a former intern and now a close friend. "She made me sit in her office once or twice a week to finish my homework. It worked — I graduated. Then she took me out to dinner to celebrate."
