Brett Keith Student Experience

On Nov. 13, 2021, a basketball game in Brooklyn, New York, reconnected Brett Keith ’94 with St. Thomas. By the final buzzer, he was hooked.

His former roommate and friend, Tommie Hall of Famer Brent Longval ’94, invited Keith to watch the men’s team during its first Division I season. The night before, head coach Johnny Tauer asked Keith to talk with players about business and careers. Later, Tauer pulled Keith and said, just so you know, we’re never going to win warmups (a basketball phrase for which team looks better before the starting buzzer).

Then Keith watched the Tommies – undersized as a team by an average of two inches - beat St. Francis Brooklyn by 18 points, with passing and teamwork he compared to “Mozart on the court.”

“I went from almost zero to 100: From being disconnected from St. Thomas to being quite connected,” Keith said.

Athletics had always been part of his life. Keith’s father attended South Dakota State on a track and field scholarship and encouraged his children to try nearly every sport. At St. Thomas, Keith studied finance and accounting and he may have been one of the very first students to a swing lacrosse stick on campus. Keith joined the lacrosse club team shortly after its founding, just for fun. He said their volunteer coach, who had played the sport on the East coast, probably watched dubiously as these Midwestern men flailed around the field. For Keith, it offered something he knew well from sports: belonging and working together.

After graduation, Keith found a short-term path back to St. Thomas. In the mid-2000s, he flew from New York to Minneapolis weekly for 15 weeks to teach an MBA topics course in private equity and mergers and acquisitions. He recalls receiving handwritten feedback from students that moved him to tears, but as an East coast resident, St. Thomas was still 1,000 miles away. Tommie basketball changed that.

Keith came to understand that athletics at St. Thomas is intertwined with the university’s mission to act wisely and work skillfully -- for a purpose greater than oneself. That conviction led him to support the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena, and the men’s basketball team’s 2023 trip to Italy. Overseas, players competed in three exhibition games and explored Rome and the Amalfi Coast. Student-athlete schedules prevent most study-abroad opportunities, and the trip was Keith’s gift of an international, undergraduate experience.

“I wanted them to connect with one another and with the world,” Keith said.

It is also what Keith sees in the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena. Opened on the St. Paul campus in 2025, the multipurpose arena is home to men’s and women’s Division I basketball and hockey. In its first year, the arena was host to commencement, career fairs, campus gatherings and community events – all part of its larger purpose.

The arena gives students new ways to build traditions and create memories together. When Tommie athletes compete there, their efforts serve a purpose larger than any one team or game: They bring students and alumni together to rally behind them and deepen a shared connection to St. Thomas.

On Sept. 17, St. Thomas will launch Be Brilliant. Be Bold. The Campaign for St. Thomas, a fundraising campaign prioritizing scholarships, faculty and academic excellence and the student experience. Keith is part of building a stronger student experience, and the campaign will open new ways for alums and friends of the university to make a difference to campus life.

“It’s an arena worthy of the institution,” Keith said, and the philanthropy that created it, is “an expression of the commitment and care that alums have for these students, even when they’ve never met them.”