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Girls Basketball Preview Bevy of New Coaches Lead the Way

By Paul Valencia, Columbian High School Sports Reporter
Published: December 13, 2009, 12:00am
3 Photos
Steven Lane/The Columbian
Jay Foreman is excited about the challenge of taking an Evergreen girls basketball program that was winless the past two seasons and turning it into a competitive team.
Steven Lane/The Columbian Jay Foreman is excited about the challenge of taking an Evergreen girls basketball program that was winless the past two seasons and turning it into a competitive team. Photo Gallery

Half of the girls basketball coaches in 4A, 3A GSHL are in their first year

Jay Foreman looks in his element, pacing along his team’s bench area, shouting out instructions to his players.

The Evergreen Plainsmen are listening.

And they are winning.

The Evergreen girls basketball team won three of its first four games this season, Foreman’s first as the head coach of a program. The Plainsmen, by the way, did not win one game the past two campaigns.

Already in the young season, it is clear that Foreman has Evergreen headed in the right direction.

New ideas and fresh starts are not unique to Evergreen, though. There are six new girls basketball coaches among the 11 Clark County schools in the Class 4A and 3A Greater St. Helens leagues.

The reasons for the changes vary. One coach had an opportunity to get into the college game. Another felt it was time to spend more time with family. Pressure from parents might have played a factor at another school. Expectations create pressure.

Usually, there are head coaching changes in every sport after every season in Clark County. But it is rare when more than half of the Clark County positions change commands in a single sport.

While Foreman is excited about his opportunity — he has tried to land a head coaching job for years — he knows he could be asked to step down one day.

“I’m very concerned about it,” Foreman said. “Some of the parents, especially those who put their kids in summer ball, start putting a lot of pressure on the (high school) sports teams and having quality coaches there. Sometimes the pressure is good. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes parents get too involved.”

It would be easy to just explain away the vacancies because of a team’s performance. But that is not always the case. Evergreen Public Schools has four high schools, with four new head coaches in girls basketball. Last year, two of the programs finished in the upper half of regular-season league play.

“There are a variety of different circumstances,” Foreman said. “I just think they were, in many cases, personality conflicts. I don’t think it was all wins and losses. I’m hoping this new batch of coaches will be able to mesh personality wise, and we’ll be OK. But you never know.”

The turnover rate in high school coaching, in all sports, is a concern to athletic directors. Having six out of 11 change in one sport, though, accentuates that concern. Hudson’s Bay, for example, has had four girls basketball coaches in the past five seasons.

“I think there are so many things now that are put upon the coaches that 20 years ago coaches didn’t have to deal with,” Bay athletic director Jeanne Shults said. “Society has changed.”

She said parent pressure has always been there, but now there is more emphasis on getting a scholarship, or making sure an athlete is showcased enough for college coaches.

“It’s flat-out hard for parents to be realistic about their own kids,” she said. “It’s very hard for them to see their child from the coach’s perspective. Playing time becomes an issue.”

Then there is the year-round workload. Some coaches have to make sure their athletes are keeping their grades up, make sure the athletes are living a healthy lifestyle. That was not necessarily the job’s standard operating procedure years ago.

Then there is the right-now society.

“People nowadays have no patience,” Shults said. “Programs take years to build.”

Al Aldridge is one of the exceptions to this constant rate of change. Now in his 30th season coaching the Prairie girls basketball program, Aldridge has seen the girls game jump in popularity, has witnessed the explosion of scholarship offers for players, and he has seen expectations soar.

While the six coaching changes do not fall under one category, he said parent pressure has forced many coaches out of the game.

“There is a sense of entitlement,” Aldridge said. “And administrations are changing and not supporting coaches’ decisions like they have in the past.”

Forget about high school, he said, just look at college.

“It’s rampant, where parents think they are entitled to give input to college coaches,” Aldridge said, noting that more than 150 Division I college basketball players changed schools this past season. “Maybe that’s got something to do with coaching, but I think it has a lot to do with parents.”

The six new coaches — Foreman at Evergreen, Sondra Knopf at Columbia River, Karrin Wilson at Heritage, Lacey Fowler at Hudson’s Bay, Kevin Estes at Mountain View, and Roger Shepard at Union — all say they want to build a program, and they want to be part of their schools for a long time. (Rod Theer of Hockinson in the 2A GSHL also is a new coach this year.)

They also understand there are no guarantees, so they plan on doing things their way.

“The time that I spend here, however long it is, I want to make a positive impact on the girls,” Wilson said.

That is the goal for all of the coaches. Sticking around for a few years would help reach that goal.

Sondra Knopf, Columbia River

Knopf was an assistant last year to Stephanie Kemp, who left Vancouver to move into college coaching.

“So far, so good,” Knopf said. “It’s a good group of girls.”

The Chieftains won two games in district tournament before finishing second to powerhouse Prairie last year. Being there on the bench has helped Knopf’s transition to becoming the head coach.

“We have all returners from last year, so I know all of them,” she said. “They’re very excited to see how far we can go.”

She is making long-term plans, too.

“We’re trying to build a stable program, one where girls want to play year round and it’s not just a winter sport,” she said.

Knopf expects to be there, too.

“That’s the plan,” she said.

Jay Foreman, Evergreen

In his first season as a head coach, Foreman already sounds like a seasoned veteran of the process.

“They are days when it looks like we can beat the heck out of everybody, and days when we look like heck,” he said with a laugh.

He is having fun. And the girls have already won a few games. When the Plainsmen won their first game, some of the players cried tears of joy, after struggling for so long.

“It’s becoming the talk of the school, the girls basketball team and how it may turn around,” Foreman said.

Karrin Wilson, Heritage

An assistant for the Timberwolves and a former player in the 4A Greater St. Helens League with Mountain View, Wilson is very much a part of the Vancouver basketball community.

“I want to be a perennial front-runner every year. I want us to build a classy program that other schools will look up to,” she said.

Heritage’s program has shown improvement through the years, but the Timberwolves have never been able to clear the biggest hurdles.

“We’ve become one of the more competitive teams, but I want to go to the next level,” Wilson said. “We’ve never won a district title. We’ve never won a league title. We’ve never gone to state. Those are my goals.”

Lacey Fowler, Hudson’s Bay

“There is a whole new attitude at Bay,” said Fowler, who is in her third year as a teacher at the school and is now a first-year varsity head coach.

She is the fourth coach of the program in the past five seasons. She hopes to end that trend.

“I think consistency, as far as sticking around, is so important,” she said. “My aim is not only to have a good year this year, but to turn the program around.”

It doesn’t always start with a coach, though. The players have to invest their time, too. Fowler said she is fortunate to be starting with this group of Eagles.

“I’m having a blast,” she said. “They’re great kids.”

Kevin Estes, Mountain View

The only one of the six new coaches in the 4A and 3A GSHLs that has head coaching experience. And he has a lot of it, with a lot of success. The last time he coached a varsity game prior to this season’s opener with Mountain View, he won a Class 2A state championship with Elma.

Estes took a couple years off, but now he is back.

“I’m cautiously excited because I want to make sure I am balancing all the things in my life,” he said.

After years of coaching, the 52-year-old said he has learned to pace himself.

“It’s great to be coaching again,” Estes added. “Hopefully we can build something nice here at Mountain View.”

Roger Shepard, Union

Shepard got two late starts to his first stint as a varsity head coach. He was hired in July, losing out on most of any available summer work with his players. Then, because he is an assistant football coach, he was pulling double duty in November.

It was a tough transition, with the players learning new terminology and meeting a new coaching staff.

“Once we survived that, I think we started to get our legs underneath us,” Shepard said.

“The kids are great. They get frustrated with me some days. I get frustrated with them some days. But they are really, really nice kids.”

He wants success, of course, and if he and the Titans earn that success, do not look for Shepard to try to find another job elsewhere.

“I’m not leaving Union,” he said.

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Columbian High School Sports Reporter