Passing the Torch

Leslie Ferguson had a memorable first practice when she joined the La Habra girls’ basketball coaching staff last year.

“I stepped on the court during tryouts and one of the girls asked, ‘Are you new here? What grade are you in?’ ” recalled Ferguson, 24.

“I was lined up with them, warming up with them and they thought I was just another kid.”

Ferguson is, in fact, just another kid coach. An assistant last year, she replaced John Koehler, who retired after 17 seasons. Ferguson is only seven years removed from her high school days at La Habra, where she graduated in 1991.

“It seems like there are a lot of really young women coaches out there,” said Mary Mulligan, who has been coach at San Clemente for 13 years.

There are a lot of really young women coaches out there, if not at the forefront of high school programs, then certainly in the background.

Of more than 70 varsity girls’ basketball teams in Orange County, only 16 are coached by women--five fewer than in the 1993-94 season. But young women are enjoying increased visibility as assistants and lower-level coaches, if not heading up programs.

“I think we miss the competition,” said Lauri Jordan, 21, a key reserve on Brea Olinda’s 1994 national championship team and now a varsity assistant at Mission Viejo. “Coaching is the closest thing to it other than playing. It’s much more intense as a coach: The win feels a lot better and the loss feels a lot worse.”

Ann Gunderson, president and founder of the two-year-old National Women’s Coaches Assn., says demographics are changing toward younger women nationwide, though no known state or national surveys exist to prove her point.

Local information about coaching staffs and their gender makeup through the years is sketchy, but increased participation nationally--by 12.6% since 1992-93 in girls’ basketball--indicates the potential coaching pool is growing. The National High School Athletic Participation Survey also shows that basketball is the most popular girls’ sport nationally, though second to volleyball in California.

“I’m sure the coaching pool out there is predominantly men, and so in some cases, there aren’t a lot of women who are applying for those positions as a varsity walk-on coach,” said Carol Strausburg, who is in her 21st year at Fountain Valley. “I don’t see [only 16 head coaches in the county] as a bad thing, but I think it’s important to have a female involved in the program somewhere.

“I don’t know that I would make the move to be a head coach--with all that responsibility--if I was going to be a walk-on coach.”

Ferguson is in her second year teaching, three years after graduating from Redlands, where she set nine school records and was named a Division III All-American.

She, along with Ivana Kovacic (Capistrano Valley Christian), 23, and Lori Peterson (Sunny Hills) are first-year coaches who have been out of high school seven years or less. Holly Jefferson (La Quinta), 24, and Alicia Adams (Orange), 24, are second-year coaches in the same boat. All are teachers, though Jefferson works at a different school in the district.

Kovacic, who graduated from Biola last May, is coaching at her high school alma mater. Joni Easterly-Colburn began coaching at her alma mater, Katella, her first year out of USC.

Easterly-Colburn, 27, now in her fifth year coaching (and first at Irvine), coached Katella two seasons before she was named Fullerton College coach.

Because of the success of the 1996 gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team, the launch of two professional leagues and increased exposure and awareness in the NCAA ranks, she says opportunities for women are about to explode.

“Now’s the time for all good women to step forward,” said Easterly-Colburn, who says she turned down offers to be an assistant at USC and California after only two years at Fullerton to focus on her family. “It’s going to get more saturated [with women] as we go along.”

Some locals are already coaching at the college level. Jody Anton (Brea Olinda, 1992) is an assistant at Pepperdine. Flo Luppani (Woodbridge, 1993) is an assistant at Humboldt State.

*

But times have changed since Mulligan, then 22, was named San Clemente’s head coach her first year out of college. Her professional task was made easier by having a teaching job.

“More women are going to be applying for those positions that become available,” Mulligan said. “Now, there are kids coming out of college who have been well coached since sixth or seventh grade and they know a lot of basketball. And there are a lot of women out there who are better qualified to coach.

“When I started [in 1986-87] there were no qualified women to coach. No women had played that much.”

Westminster Coach Dick Katz has a theory on why more young women are getting involved.

“For years, I don’t think women wanted to coach because the hours were so long,” he said. “Now, you’ve got women who have come through basketball programs and put in those long hours as players and they understand what goes along with it.”

They also understand the intangible benefits of coaching, which seem to draw them to it as much as anything.

“I wanted to be a role model,” said Peterson, Sunny Hills’ coach, who is six years removed from high school and had only two years’ experience before taking over the Lancers’ program. “Nowadays, with divorce rates high, the kids are living with guardians or only one parent and they need an adult to look up to--and a lot of times, I think it’s the coach.”

Peterson’s principal at Sunny Hills, Loring Davies, worried little about handing the reins of the program to such a young coach.

“We weren’t looking for any particular age or gender, but someone we could keep on campus, who was energetic and who knew the game, and she fit that criteria,” Davies said. “In an ideal situation, you’d like someone with considerable experience, but with the other criteria you’re looking for and the quality of candidates available, you may not get the best of all worlds. She did not have tremendous experience, but she fit the other criteria we were looking at very well.”

Though Ferguson and Peterson--who have the advantage of being teachers at their schools--are college graduates early in their careers, Celea Kroeker is still in college. Formerly a player at Huntington Beach, she is now a sophomore at Golden West College and the varsity assistant at Calvary Chapel.

“I want to be able to give back something which was given to me,” said Kroeker, who played at Irvine Valley College last year but suffered a career-ending knee injury. “I know where they’re going and have been where they are now.”

Calvary Chapel Athletic Director Rose Imbriano said Kroeker “brings a unique perspective to the kids because she hurt her knee in college and can’t play again.”

So, too, does Lauri Jordan, a varsity assistant at Mission Viejo and a senior at UC Irvine. Jordan played on the 1994 Brea Olinda team that was declared national champion by USA Today.

“The kids respected her right away because they knew she knew the game,” said Jim Irby, Mission Viejo’s coach. “Everyone knows Brea. What [the kids] didn’t know was that she was on four state championship teams and a national championship team. She knows what it takes to be successful, and that has helped tremendously as far as the girls are concerned.

“She tells them about the old days [at Brea] and how intense it was and it has opened their eyes to what it means to be successful and be a team. They look at this and say, ‘We can understand this; it’s not just Coach Irby telling us. It’s someone who went through this.’ ”

Yet the coaches get even younger than Kroeker, 20, and Jordan, 21. Two of today’s youngest were in high school last season.

Kristina Watanabe, 18, is the frosh-soph coach at Costa Mesa. Megan McCartin, 18, is the junior varsity coach for Estancia. Both attend Orange Coast College.

Watanabe, who missed her senior season because of a knee injury but loved the rush of playing, said school pride was a big factor in her decision to coach. “I thought I could be part of the solution,” she said. But she has also seen the drawbacks.

“I’ve been told by [opposing] coaches I should be playing frosh-soph with my team,” Watanabe said. “Our trainer [mistaken for the coach] has been told by the ref that we’re not going to start the game [even though] I’m right there. A friend of mine, who is a guy, does stats and the refs go to him even though I’m sitting at the head of the bench. I guess for women, it’s just the downside.”

Estancia Coach Paul Kirby, says “you don’t have to be a great player to be a good coach,” and that “it’s good to have someone help you who played for you [because she] knows what you want.”

The return to old stomping grounds is a good way to get experience. Three of Tustin’s four coaches are former players: Sarah Davis (Class of ‘94), Shari Needham (‘92) and Lynette Gonzalez (‘89).

“Coaching college or in the pros is something I would like to pursue,” said Needham, 24, who holds Tustin’s scoring record. “With the different leagues, there are a lot more opportunities for advancement. That’s why I’m starting out now.”

Jinelle Williams, 24, a 1991 graduate of Brea and 1995 graduate of UC Irvine, is the frosh-soph coach for the Ladycats.

“If it wasn’t at Brea, I probably wouldn’t be coaching,” Williams said. “This program did a lot for me and I wanted to give back, and this is my way of giving back to a program that put me through college and taught me not only about basketball, but how it could be applied to life--being on time and a team player, being dedicated and committed and a leader.”

*

Katz, Westminster’s coach, has a daughter, Dana, 21, who graduated from Valencia in 1994. She already has two full seasons under her belt as an assistant at Valencia.

“She realized she wasn’t a great player, but she wanted to be a teacher, and the joy of doing something she loved [basketball] went hand-in-hand,” Katz said. “Coaching is teaching.”

That’s what Julie Armendariz, 24, a student at Orange Coast College believes. Armendariz, a 1991 graduate of Ocean View, played at Chapman in 1991-92. She assists Katz at Westminster.

“I was never that good and with the coaches I had in high school and college, they never helped me out the way I felt they should have,” Armendariz said. “They only paid attention to the star players. An extra 30 minutes after practice two times a week is all I needed.

“I let Coach Katz deal with the star players. It’s the seventh and eighth players on the team that I like to deal with.”

Dana Katz isn’t the only person to follow a parent’s footsteps: Nicole Quinn (Woodbridge, ‘93) is an assistant to Pat Quinn at Woodbridge; Lavender Whitacre Florance (Capistrano Valley, ‘90), 25, who began coaching in 1993, is frosh-soph coach at Villa Park for her father, Len; and Ocean View boys’ Coach Jim Harris’ daughter, Kim, 31, now in her fifth year at Brethren Christian, coached the Ocean View junior varsity program during her junior year in high school.

Harris kept on coaching.

Easterly-Colburn, too, hopes to keep on coaching as she passes from kid coach to seasoned pro.

“You know, I’ve got my master’s and could make money, but my love for the game and opportunity to give back is priceless,” she said. “You can’t put money on that. And that’s why I coach.”