Titans’ Maryalyce Jeremiah Has Found Her Place in the Sun

The new Cal State Fullerton women’s basketball coach turned to the assistant sports information director and laid down the guidelines, quickly and concisely.

“If no one can ever find me Ron, I’ll be at the beach,” Maryalyce Jeremiah said. “Just call the beach, and they’ll find me. Any beach. I could be at any one on any given day.”

It was said with mock seriousness, but the message to Ron Fremont was clear. For someone who spent her entire life in the Midwest, the adjustment from grains of wheat to grains of sand had occurred with remarkable speed. It took all of about 10 minutes. Maybe less.

With an attractive tan and a healthy glow radiating from her face, she looks as though she was born somewhere between Los Angeles and San Diego, not in Toledo, Ohio. Culture shock has yet to claim her as a victim.

Jeremiah, who coached at Indiana University before coming to Fullerton, recently was named to replace Chris Gobrecht. But long before that, her heart was here. Simply stated, she was an absentee Californian.

“A lot of people think there’s an adjustment because I’m originally from the Midwest, “ she said. “I’m not really positive that’s true. As a matter of fact, I said to someone the other day that it was difficult to believe that I haven’t lived out here.”

To solve her incredulity at such a thought, Maryalyce Jeremiah conjured up her own vision of manifest destiny. Quite unlike the settlers of the last century, her westward expansion was a gradual process, with several long stopping points along the road to the promised land.

Her slow trek began in Fairborn, Ohio, where she began her coaching career at the high school level. Then it was on to the University of Dayton and two years as a junior varsity coach. But her journey took a detour, and she found herself heading in the wrong direction--eastbound back to Cedarville, where she was the coach for nine years.

Then it was time to move on. Packing her belongings yet again, Jeremiah found herself back in Dayton. Two years there earned her a record of 69-5 and the AIAW Division 2 national championship in 1980.

On to Indiana. The pilgrimage continued. She remained in Bloomington for five years, completing her mission there with a 90-63 record. Her ability to win in the Midwest having been proven, it was time, at long last, for the winning of the West.

“I’ve always thought, ever since I was in high school, that one day I would live in California,” she said. “I decided that coming west one state at a time was kind of a slow way to make it. So I decided that the next time I made a move, that I would skip all the ones in between. And that’s what I did.”

She did it, and the satisfaction the move has brought her came quickly, if unsurprisingly. Her home in Placentia is less than 45 minutes from the beach, and the sunshine has helped soothe whatever adjustment there has been.

Jeremiah is asked if there is anything about this place she finds unappealing, anything at all that might have made her adaptation an ordeal. She thinks long and hard, struggling to respond.

“You have to adjust to the closeness of living,” she said. “I never thought that I would like living in a home with a fence. I was thinking, ‘Oh, geez, I’ll never live in a place with a fence around it.’ ”

She admits her complaint is rather absurd, but that honestly seems to be the extent of her disenchantment.

“I’m extremely happy here,” she said. “And I really always knew that I would be.”

It’s July, basketball season is still four months away and the relative calm surrounding Maryalyce Jeremiah’s life is not necessarily going to remain. Sunshine and days at the beach eventually will give way to the challenge of becoming familiar with an entirely new group of basketball players she currently knows little about.

That’s just the beginning. Of the players with whom she must familiarize, only one was a starter last season. And the competition in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. is better than it was in the Big Ten.

There is the dilemma of nearby UCLA and USC, established powers with whom Jeremiah must compete for recruits and recognition. And on top of everything, there is the financial headache that coaching at Cal State Fullerton can bring on. The cash flows from the university to the athletic department to the women’s basketball program far slower in Fullerton than it does in Bloomington. Ed Carroll, Fullerton athletic director, estimated the women’s basketball budget at Indiana to be two or three times greater.

But one by one, Jeremiah takes each element of the job that most people would consider, at best, frustrating and at worst, frightening, and shapes it into a piece of the puzzle she is trying to put together. She views each demanding task with eager relish, not with dread.

She appears unfazed that Robin Holmes is the lone returning starter from last season.

“Coming into it with young players that aren’t mine and me as a new coach certainly doesn’t give us an advantage. But they’ll (Fullerton’s opponents) know we’re there.”

She seems unconcerned that the PCAA will be one of the country’s most competitive conferences.

“To get a bid to the NCAA will be a goal in this program every year, including this year.”

The potential recruiting wars that at times could prove futile against UCLA and USC don’t seem to upset her.

“There could be some players that I recruit that UCLA or USC will recruit, too. If they get ‘em, then I’ll get another one that’s just as good.”

If she has lost sleep over the financial resources--or lack thereof--at Fullerton, you would never know it.

“It doesn’t have some of the funds that Indiana had. And if I sit around and think how bad that could be, then I won’t use what I have. That’s the way it is.”

In the Midwest, there exists a work ethic that is almost instinctive and is never questioned. It is ingrained in you from the time you are old enough to walk and is accepted just as the rolling fields and tractors and plows are accepted, with scarcely a second thought.

It is ingrained in Jeremiah, and now she brings it to California, a place often denounced for putting pleasure before business.

“The people back there are very disciplined, work-oriented, ‘I gotta do this now, and let’s talk about the fun things when it’s done.’ People here--I don’t mean to say they’re not work-oriented; they are--but they’re a little bit more easy with things.”

Somehow, she will find a middle ground. She has no choice but to do so. There must be something in between the tanning oil she will apply at Huntington Beach and the sweat over which she will preside in Titan Gym.

“I’m a sun worshipper,” she said. “Six, eight, 10 hours a day.”

But when November is upon her, expect her strong midwestern character to emerge. Ohio and Indiana are, after all, a long way from the nearest ocean.

It should hardly come as a surprise if she is heard saying, “I gotta do this now. Let’s talk about the fun things when it’s done.”