Scoggins: Kate Holmquist plays defense like the daughter of Secret Service agents ... because she is one

Kate Holmquist is a tenacious defender for the Maple Grove girls basketball team. Her dedication to smothering her opponent can be traced to her mom’s coaching in youth basketball.

“One of her key things was to take a lot of pride in our defense,” Holmquist said.

For opponents who have been guarded by Holmquist and felt that tenacity, this might not come as a surprise: Kate’s mom once worked as a Secret Service agent. And so did her dad.

Good luck topping that at career day, kids.

“It’s not that glamorous,” mom Jaime noted with a smile as she and husband Rob prepared to watch their daughter in the Class 4A semifinals Thursday at Williams Arena.

The couple shared that occupation as newlyweds under President George W. Bush in the early 2000s. Their journey to the White House started as athletes at the University of North Dakota.

Jaime (Pudenz) led UND to three Division II national championships in basketball and finished her career as the school’s all-time leader in assists and steals. She is a member of UND’s Hall of Fame.

Rob played wide receiver on the football team. A criminal justice major, he dreamed of a career in federal protection.

Jaime took some criminal justice classes with the thought of pursuing a career with the FBI but decided on a teaching degree.

Rob landed in the Secret Service after college. Jaime got a job as a fourth-grade teacher.

Rob worked in the uniformed division at the White House. He protected the grounds on the emergency response team. He also handled advance security detail whenever the president took trips, and even visited President Bush’s ranch in Texas.

The newlyweds rarely saw each other. Jaime worked school hours, Rob worked evening hours and was constantly out of town.

Jaime hatched a plan: She would join the Secret Service, too, so they could be together more.

The process included a three-month stint in New Mexico at a federal law enforcement training center and three months at the Secret Service training center.

She joined her husband on the emergency response team at the White House. They often worked together on the overnight shift.

The work was a grind. Long hours, long days, long weeks.

“Hurry up and wait for a problem to develop,” Rob said.

The job demanded situational awareness all the time, but quiet moments were the hardest.

“I’d watch the squirrels,” Rob said.

“There was a point where I knew how many times the Washington Monument blinked in a minute,” Jaime said.

The couple realized their work-life balance was not conducive for starting a family. They left the Secret Service in 2006, moved to Minnesota and welcomed Kate into the world in 2007.

Rob got the Secret Service itch again and returned in 2010 as a special agent assigned to Omaha. He worked cases of fraud and intelligence threats, but because of his proximity to Iowa, he spent most of his time there as President Barack Obama sought re-election in 2012.

Iowa’s importance in presidential races requires lots of time canvassing the state. Rob slept in too many hotels to count.

“I was living on per diem and paying my mortgage for the house I wasn’t in,” he said.

He left the agency in 2014, and the family returned to Minnesota. Rob and Jaime have worked in the corporate world since, devoting their spare time to coaching Kate and son Drew in sports.

“[Secret Service] is a tough life for the family,” Rob said. “The ones that really succeed have maybe a military background that they know about traveling and being gone and having a parent gone for their work.”

Their children know about their first career and have asked questions, but the parents don’t have any stories worthy of a Hollywood movie.

“Nothing too crazy or anything,” said Kate, a junior guard who has committed to play at Montana.

The Holmquists are perfectly happy with the normalcy of suburban life. This week that meant sitting inside Williams Arena, cheering for their daughter at the state basketball tournament. That’s infinitely more enjoyable than watching squirrels.