Obama takes on new role: assistant basketball coach

"On Sundays, we\'d get the team together to practice, and a couple of times, I\'d help coach the games," Obama noted for the first time, in his weekly radio and Internet address which this week marked Father\'s Day.

"It was a lot of fun -- even if Sasha rolled her eyes when her dad voiced his displeasure with the (referees)," Obama said.

"I was hopeful that in the years to come, she\'d look back on experiences like these as the ones that helped define her as a person -- and as a parent herself."

Obama has taken a lead on Father\'s Day in recent years, delivering speeches as president and as a White House candidate that called on men to step up their responsibilities as fathers.

The US leader, whose Kenyan father left him when he was only two years old, has also launched a national dialogue over the last year, on how to address early on the challenges of father absence, dispatching top officials around the country to discuss the issue.

"My administration has offered men who want to be good fathers a little extra support," he said in the address Saturday.

"We\'re doing this because we all have a stake in forging stronger bonds between fathers and their children," he said, noting there was a full US government website on the subject, located at http://fatherhood.gov.

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