On and Off the Court, She’s a Coach for Life

Wife, mother, coach and teacher. At 41, Melissa Hearlihy is living life to its fullest. She is the kind of role model teenage girls look toward for guidance and inspiration.

She has stayed in the trenches of high school coaching for 18 years trying to prepare girls to compete on and off the court.

Based on championships and victories alone, she has been a runaway success. Her basketball teams won 11 league championships and three section titles in 15 years at Mission Hills Alemany High. In two years at North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake, she has won one section title and two league titles. This month, she earned her 400th victory and her team is off to an 11-2 start.

But Hearlihy wouldn’t have passed up college jobs and continued to juggle family responsibilities if coaching were only about championships.

She talks about a group of players who graduated from Alemany in 1990. Every year, they try to get together as part of a family reunion.

“They’ve been to each other’s weddings, and it fulfills me in a way that I don’t think anything else could,” she said.

Making a difference in teenagers’ lives is what motivates Hearlihy.

It might be requiring two girls to sit through practice in street clothes for missing the middle school bus, to teach them a lesson about punctuality. It might be running her players through a strenuous conditioning drill to teach them about not giving up.

She is a born leader who’s not afraid to raise her voice and demonstrate strength and toughness. Through athletics, she’s teaching girls ideas and instincts that will help them in the real world.

“They need to be a little tougher and not so thin skinned, which we tend to be,” she said. “Our feelings get hurt much easier. I think athletics gives us the avenue to be tougher and not so sensitive.”

Hearlihy and her husband, Bill, have been married for 10 years. They have two sons, Josh, 9, and Kyle, 2. Hearlihy remembers asking Josh what he thought of his teacher last year, Ms. Petty.

“Ms. Petty is just like you,” he said. “She’s tough but fair.”

To gauge what impact Hearlihy has made on her players, take a look at Sarah Webb, who graduated from Alemany in 1992. She hadn’t played competitive basketball until Hearlihy put her on the varsity team as a freshman.

Her first reaction was to quit after all the conditioning drills.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Webb said. “The soreness, the physical endurance I’m going through. Even my dad was saying, ‘This is crazy.’ ”

Webb survived and hasn’t forgotten what it meant to play basketball for Hearlihy.

“I think the confidence you build from working hard and working toward a goal and keeping focus carries through other life lessons,” she said. “It was a great four years that I wouldn’t trade for anything.”

Webb has gone on to become a school psychologist and has two infant boys with her husband, Rob, the athletic director at Claremont Webb. Looking back, she marvels at how Hearlihy was able to coach, teach and raise a family.

“She never lost any dedication to the team,” Webb said. “I don’t know how she did it. She always made us feel we were her No. 1 priority.”

Times have changed. At a much earlier age, girls are playing basketball and aspiring to obtain college scholarships.

“The [increased] availability of scholarships has made basketball more influential in their life,” Hearlihy said.

Hearlihy was surprised to hear from Josh’s teacher that he, too, was talking about earning a scholarship.

“I said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ She goes, ‘Well, where’s he getting it from?’ He’s grown up in that world. That’s what people talk about,” Hearlihy said.

Through time management, Hearlihy demonstrates every day to her players how to be a mother, wife and teacher.

“The nature of my job allows my kids to be around,” she said. “If I was a doctor, I couldn’t have them in the surgery room. If I was a lawyer, I couldn’t have them in the courtroom. Even though my hours are long, there are days I spend time with my kids.”

Coaching high school basketball doesn’t feel like a job to Hearlihy. She may never stop because her husband won’t let her.

“He will do anything to help my program,” Hearlihy said. “It would never be in question to ever quit coaching. I may have to coach until I die. Now that our kids are going to start going through coaches, we know how important it is to have somebody to trust your kids with.”

Just last week, Eleanor Dykstra of Cerritos Valley Christian picked up her 600th victory after 30 seasons coaching basketball.

With coaches the caliber of Dykstra and Hearlihy leading the way, girls won’t be lacking in successful women role models.

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Eric Sondheimer can be reached at eric.sondheimer@latimes.com