Mulligan Cashes In Her Tips : San Clemente: She turned girls’ basketball program around with help and support from other coaches in South Coast League.

Advice and support came fast and free when Mary Mulligan took over in 1986 as girls’ basketball coach at San Clemente High School.

After five consecutive losing seasons under five coaches, the Tritons were the South Coast League’s favorite wayward little sister. Maybe someday they’d grow up and settle down, but, in the meantime, the other league coaches didn’t see any harm in offering Mulligan some tips.

“In a tournament game at the start of my first year, El Toro beat us by 45 points, and Greg Yeck (then El Toro coach) came up to me and said the team looked a lot better,” Mulligan said. “I was like, ‘It does ?’ Because I didn’t think a team that lost by that much could look improved to anybody.

“But Greg encouraged me, and John Hattrup (then at Mission Viejo) and Stan DiMaggio (then at Capistrano Valley) gave me some really good advice, too. It seemed like they really wanted San Clemente to be competitive again.”

Yeck, Hattrup and DiMaggio were three of Orange County’s top girls’ coaches at the time, and Mulligan gladly accepted their advice.

“I was 23 years old and a year out of college with no coaching experience,” said Mulligan, who is the daughter-in-law of former UC Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan. “I wasn’t about to pretend that I knew everything, and those guys were good guys to listen to.”

It wasn’t long, however, before the tips stopped coming. Not coincidentally, it wasn’t long before Mulligan turned San Clemente into a winning program.

Entering her sixth season with the Tritons, Mulligan, 28, is far and away the dean of the league’s girls’ basketball coaches. No other coach in the league has more than one year of experience at their current school, and two schools start the 1991-92 season with their third head coach in three years.

San Clemente’s coaching stability has helped make the Tritons a co-favorite with Capistrano Valley to win the 1991-92 league title. Four starters return for San Clemente, including all-league players Kristin McOwen, Maili Rohner and Dana Netherby.

“The situation in the program now is a lot different than when I started,” Mulligan said. “Since I’ve been here a while, the kids coming in know my name and know that we’ve won some games lately, so they’re interested in playing. My first year, there wasn’t any interest in girls’ basketball at all because it seemed like the coach changed every year and the team was losing.”

In Mulligan’s first two years, San Clemente was a combined 17-23. But in the past three seasons, the Tritons have posted winning records and an overall 44-36 record, including last year’s 16-9 mark. One of 1991’s losses came in the second round of the Southern Section playoffs to perennial power Brea-Olinda, 63-45. Despite the defeat, San Clemente earned respect by staying within 10 points most of the way against the eventual State Division II champion Wildcats, and Mulligan won an admirer in Brea-Olinda Coach Mark Trakh.

“That’s a good, disciplined team,” Trakh said. “She’s taken that program a long way.”

Where Mulligan has taken the San Clemente program is back to where it was when she was Mary Johnson, an All-CIF guard for the Tritons. Mulligan, who graduated from San Clemente in 1981, was a four-year varsity starter and also excelled in softball and volleyball. The Tritons went to the basketball playoffs with winning records during her last three seasons.

As a senior, Mulligan was named Triton of the year and accepted a basketball scholarship to UC Irvine. She played two years with the Anteaters before transferring to UC Santa Barbara. Mulligan’s intent was to play basketball for the Gauchos after sitting out a season, but she married Shaun Mulligan in the spring of her redshirt year and returned to Irvine to complete her degree in economics.

Mulligan obtained her teaching credential and got a job in San Clemente’s math department in 1985. In the summer of 1986, Triton Athletic Director Jim McNaught called and surprised her by offering her the girls’ varsity coaching position.

“I knew when I was in college that I wanted to coach, but I didn’t expect to start at the varsity level, especially when I didn’t have any experience,” Mulligan said. “Coach McNaught thought I was qualified, though, probably because he figured I’d stick around for a while.

“I thought it was great at first, until I learned how much work off the court came with the job.”

Mulligan also had her concerns at home. Until he resigned his commission in July after eight years in the Marine Corps, Shaun was a captain stationed at the Tustin MCAS as a night-vision goggles helicopter pilot/instructor. Included in his already dangerous duties were the requisite six-month overseas tours.

“He had two tours like that, and obviously that was hard,” Mulligan said. “It was hard whenever he flew, because it was usually at night and it made me nervous sometimes.”

While last season was Mulligan’s most successful as a coach, it was her most difficult off the court. For a time during the Persian Gulf War, including the South Coast League basketball season, Shaun was on 24-hour notice to be shipped out to combat. Also during the basketball season, the Mulligans’ 2-year-old son, Conor, was hospitalized with severe dehydration and flu.

Fortunately for the Mulligans, Conor recovered quickly and Shaun wasn’t sent to the Gulf. “We were both pretty stressed for a while,” Mulligan said. “While Conor was sick, I still had my coaching responsibilities and I had to call in a few box scores from the hospital, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing right then.

“Then when the war started, I had to try to stay focused on my team while I knew Shaun could be on his way over there at any time. It was tough, but I think the team did a good job of helping me have fun and keeping my mind off the other things.”

Shaun now works as a real estate broker, and Mulligan is expecting the couple’s second child Dec. 14. Still, she plans to return to coaching as soon as possible.

“If everything goes well, I’d like to be back with the team after two or three days,” she said. “Shaun got out of the military because of our family, and he’s really looking forward to being around all the time so he can spend more time with the kids.”

While she’s away from the Tritons, Mulligan’s team will be in capable hands. Assistant coaches Karen Gerhard and Brian Scherbart are former varsity coaches. In fact, Scherbart was Mulligan’s coach at San Clemente.

“It’s a very comfortable situation,” Scherbart said. “Now I can just coach and let her do all the worrying, and she can see what I went through when she was playing for me.”

Speaking of coaching help, what about father-in-law Bill?

“He gives me advice sometimes, and if it’s about offense, I take it,” Mulligan said, laughing. “We don’t talk about defense a lot, though, and I think that’s fine with him.”