Coach Helping UCI Program Rebound

Colleen Matsuhara has always been easy to spot on the gym floor at a crowded, college basketball game.

It’s not just that she’s the coach. She’s also the only one just over 5 feet tall.

“If I’m meeting someone for the first time, I just tell them to look for the short Asian woman and, sure enough, they find me every time,” said Matsuhara, a third-generation Japanese-American.

But at UC Irvine, where she has worked as head coach of the women’s basketball team since last year, Matsuhara blends with a student population that is more than 35% Asian.

“I noticed right away that there were a lot more Asian students around, which was something I hadn’t experienced in the past,” she said. “You can’t help but notice that there aren’t a lot of others like you around.”

Matsuhara has enjoyed a 16-year career as an assistant or head college basketball coach at UCLA, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Nebraska, the University of Texas, Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach.

At Long Beach, Matsuhara helped lead the team to the NCAA West Regional semifinals in 1991. Then she accepted the job as head coach of the struggling UCI women’s team, which has a dismal succession of losing seasons.

“My goal is to really try and turn this program around,” she said. “I’ve seen what hard work can do in the past. The way I look at it, there is nowhere to go but up.”

But before she accepted the position, she sought the advice of legendary UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden, who had won 10 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championships and for whom Matsuhara had worked at basketball camps throughout the years.

“Coach Wooden and my father are my biggest role models,” she said. “My dad stills scolds me for yelling at referees during games.”

It was her father, William, who instilled a love for basketball in his only daughter while she was growing up in Sacramento.

“My father taught me basketball,” Matsuhara said. “I just grew up in the gym. I was always in the gym. If I wasn’t practicing or playing, I was watching a game or was working on my game.”

Although she played on the basketball teams at Sacramento City College and Cal State Sacramento, Matsuhara said she was aiming more toward a career in clinical psychology rather than basketball.

“I had other career goals in mind, but I really wasn’t very excited about them,” she said. “I remember feeling like all I really wanted to do was coach basketball.”

Since making her decision to be a coach, she has never lacked for job offers. “I’m willing to work very hard and I’m very dependable,” she said. “Also, I’ve kept my sense of humor. You can’t survive in this profession without a sense of humor.”

Matsuhara admits that the coaching lifestyle can be grueling.

“There really is no off-season,” she said. “When you’re not coaching, you’re out recruiting at high schools looking for prospects. You watch a lot of games, and sometimes it feels like an 80-hour-a-week job.”