There’s No Mistaking Gobrecht Along the Washington Sideline

The question is the same, it’s the answer that seems to have changed.

Who is Chris Gobrecht? It was something you needed to ask at Cal State Fullerton more than a decade ago, when she was the school’s little-known women’s basketball coach from 1979-85. She stomped the sidelines, shoulders hunched, wagging her finger at Titan players and tried to make a cash-strapped program competitive. Few noticed.

Who is Chris Gobrecht? No question required at Washington this past October, when three of her players put on a silly, all-in-fun skit at midnight madness, the Huskies’ preseason event. They stomped the sidelines, shoulders hunched, wagging their fingers at imaginary players, all while wearing Gobrecht-style wigs.

About 5,000 in attendance knew exactly who was being teased. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they flattered the heck out of Gobrecht.

“My 6-year-old daughter kept saying, ‘That’s mommy there, that’s mommy there, oh, and that’s mommy there,’ ” Gobrecht said. “They were really that good at it, right down to the red faces. I loved it. You got to be able to laugh at yourself.”

Gobrecht can laugh, almost hysterically at this point.

Her six vocal but somewhat anonymous seasons at Fullerton are a memory. She has spent the last 10 at Washington.

There have been three conference titles, nine NCAA appearances and 321 victories. Gobrecht and her teams have been a public spectacle, with raucous crowds, since she arrived at Washington. The women’s team has outdrawn the men’s team in the past--and is about even this season--and rates media coverage equal to the city’s professional teams.

“She made this one of the great environments for women’s basketball in the nation,” said Kathy Anderson, who has been Gobrecht’s top assistant for 15 years.

Only one thing remains, and it’s probably not coming this year.

“We need to do the Final Four thing,” Gobrecht said.

This is considered a rebuilding season. Washington lost its first four games, but is 10-7, and 4-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference, good enough for second place.

“This year is fun,” said Gobrecht, 40, who starts two freshmen and a sophomore. “I have to coach my backside off.”

Only Stanford has been more successful in the Pac-10 during the 1990s, something Gobrecht speaks about with pride and distress.

Gobrecht and Cardinal Coach Tara VanDerveer have clashed in the past. VanDerveer may be absent--she is taking a year off to coach the Olympic team--but it is still Stanford to Gobrecht.

When the Cardinal won the national title in 1990, Gobrecht and her coaches sent them sweatshirts that read, “Congratulations Cardinal: National Champs, 32-1.” The 1 was enlarged and in bold. Stanford’s only loss was to Washington.

“We meant it as a joke,” Gobrecht said. “We had an assistant who played at Stanford and she came up with the idea. We thought it was a way to congratulate them in a fun way.”

Fun?

Sure, like earlier that same season when Gobrecht told reporters that she hated Stanford. A comment, she said, that was blown out of proportion but got her a reprimand from Washington officials. Or last season, when she wagged her finger under VanDerveer’s nose after a game for what Gobrecht felt were disrespectful comments about the Huskies.

“It’s a great rivalry,” Gobrecht said. “You bang your head against them a lot. They always have 15 All-Americans on their roster. They come to the Northwest to recruit and play to an elitist feeling that’s up here.”

In other words . . .

“It’s a personal thing for Coach, so it’s a personal thing for us,” Washington guard Shannon Kelly said.

Such is the intensity of Gobrecht’s approach.

The team’s style--mainly its high-volume defense--is fun to watch and annoying to face.

Asked last year about how she prepared to play Washington, VanDerveer said, “I have our substitutes climb all over our starters and let them foul the hell out of them.”

That comment resulted in the finger-pointing incident. But it presented a picture that wasn’t too far off. Gobrecht doesn’t believe in half-measures.

Gobrecht, who graduated from USC in 1977, certainly attacked the Fullerton job with intensity. She arrived--with a car license plate that read “Title IX”--at a time when women’s athletics was emerging nationally. She seemed perfect for the job, a young coach with strong opinions about women’s sports. It wasn’t that easy. By 1985, the program still had only nine scholarships.

Fullerton was lumped--and took its lumps--in the same conference as USC--during the Paula and Pam McGee and Cheryl Miller years--perennial power UCLA and Long Beach State, then ranked nationally among the top teams.

Gobrecht was 84-92 in six seasons.

“Chris was very successful at Fullerton, a lot more than people realize,” said Arizona Coach Joan Bonvicini, who was Long Beach State’s coach from 1979-91. “Her teams were always well prepared. She got kids to overachieve.”

The Titans were 17-11 in 1983-84 and 19-11 the next season, when they made the National Invitation Tournament. Still, every loss was personal.

“You never rode with her after a loss,” said Meg Sanders, who played at Fullerton from 1981-85. “She drove one van and Kathy Anderson drove the other. If we lost, we ran to Kathy’s van. Chris was a very, uh, aggressive driver after a loss.

“She pushed us and taught us how to push ourselves.”

She jumped at the Washington job in the spring of 1985. It was too tempting.

The Huskies were a good program, finishing 26-2 in 1984-85, but drew small crowds and had little national recognition.

“The program had a regional focus,” Gobrecht said. “But you could see there was something there. I came from Fullerton, where the resources were so limited. Then I looked at Washington and went ‘Oh wow.’ ”

She has tapped that vein. Her first group of recruits played harsh, exciting defense. The winning, and crowds, followed. The Huskies have won at least 17 games each season under Gobrecht. The team outdrew the men’s team from 1990 through 1992 and averages 3,509 this season, about 1,000 fewer than the men’s team.

Satisfaction enough for any coach. Still, there are mountains left to climb beyond Rainer.

At the Mideast Regional last year, she was asked by a reporter what it would take for the Huskies to become a top program nationally. It put Gobrecht in a foot-stomping, shoulder-hunching, finger-wagging mood.

“I said, ‘Hey, we’ve been to a regional four times in seven years and in the tournament nine times in 10 years, now that’s not a great program?’ ”