Ayres Named Women’s Head Coach

Cal State Fullerton Monday hired another young basketball coach with a growing reputation, signing Deborah Ayres to a three-year contract to coach the Titan women’s team.

Unlike Brad Holland, 35, the former UCLA assistant who was hired as Fullerton men’s basketball coach in April, Ayres, 34, has head-coaching experience.

She has spent the past two seasons as coach at Solano College in Suisun, Calif., and was a junior varsity and varsity head coach at Vallejo High School for six years.

But like Holland, this will be Ayres’ first Division I head-coaching job.

“I might not have a big name, but I’m going to outwork anyone who would have taken this position,” said Ayres, who guided Solano to a 24-8 record and the State community college tournament last season.

“Maryalyce Jeremiah (former coach who is now the Titans’ senior women’s administrator) was looking for someone like herself, someone who would work hard, be disciplined and love kids. I have that same philosophy and want to carry it on.”

Fullerton Athletic Director Bill Shumard drew parallels to Ayres and Holland, who are in similar stages of their careers, and said Ayres will be able to put her own stamp on the program.

“It’s important to put your personal signature on a program, and I think she’ll be able to do that,” Shumard said. “She’s really developed a network of support, and I couldn’t find anyone who said anything but glowing things about her.”

Ayres replaces Jeremiah, who resigned in May after seven seasons to become the school’s associate athletic director. Ayres has known Jeremiah for five years, since the former Titan coach recruited Jennifer Beckmeyer out of Vallejo High in 1987.

The Titans went 112-93 under Jeremiah and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament in 1990-91, but slipped to 11-17 and eighth place in the Big West Conference last season.

Fullerton returns 10 lettermen from last season’s team but lost two of its best players--forward Claudette Jackson, who was a senior, and center Kisa Hughes, the conference freshman of the year who has been released from her scholarship and has signed grant-in-aid papers with UCLA.

“The chances of Kisa staying are remote, but I’m going to give it a try,” Ayres said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people in our business, and everyone agrees it’s a mistake for her to leave. There’s so much we have to give her, it would be a shame.”

Ayres, whom Jeremiah described as “one of the most promising young coaches in the country,” will start at a salary of $65,000 a year and will also retain Jeremiah’s assistant, June Kearny. She plans to hire another assistant this summer.

Ayres, whose Vallejo teams went 63-19 and won three league championships in three seasons (1985-88), was hired over two other finalists, Mark Trakh, coach at Brea-Olinda High, and Michigan State assistant Sue Guevara.

“Like Gary McKnight (Mater Dei coach who was a finalist for the men’s job), Mark was a very strong candidate who deserved an opportunity to achieve at the next level,” Shumard said. “But I think the interview process bore out the ultimate candidate. Deborah knows the California high school and junior college system and has a bright future ahead of her.”

Ayres, a 1980 graduate of Chico State who didn’t play basketball in college, also knows the California State University system is in a severe budget crisis, but that hardly deterred her from pursuing the Fullerton job.

“It doesn’t affect me because I’m coming from a situation where I did it all,” said Ayres, who spent the 1988-89 season as an assistant at Iowa State and 1989-90 as a graduate assistant at Tennessee. “I was the sports information director, the equipment manager, I’d drive the team van. . . . I wore all the hats.

“Here, even if we don’t have the money to do certain things, there are the people to do them, and I’ll certainly appreciate that.”