A profile of UCSB women's basketball coach Mark French
By Steve Barth
We tell ourselves that competition is the American Way. We convince ourselves that conflict and confrontation are so healthy that we practice them not only between groups but also within them, whether in sports, business, or our own families. We idolize winners, jealous of their sometimes abominable excesses. We despise the losers, dismissing their noblest qualities.
Mark French doesn't think it has to be that way. As he begins his tenth season coaching the UCSB women's basketball program, he has tangible proof that there are viable alternatives.
Coach Mark French retracts his long legs and leans forward in his office chair to interrupt a long discussion of the philosophical imperatives of his program.
"Let's not be naive," he says. "I will get fired if we don't win a certain number of basketball games."
This might be obvious talking to any other college coach. However Coach French rarely talks about winning. In fact, he doesn't talk about basketball as much as one might expect.
Not that his job is in question, since his team has posted six straight winning seasons. Women's Basketball at UCSB has come to dominate the Big West Conference and climbed to the top 20's in national rankings. The Gauchos won Big West tournament championships in 1992 and 1993 and went on to NCAA tournaments, where they advanced as far as the second round both years. They also were Big West regular season champions in 1992 and 1996. French has twice been honored as Big West Coach of the Year.
Other coaches might achieve records like this, but some will destroy their young players self-esteem in the process. "You can win games and still not be happy," understands senior guard Erin Alexander. "Winning is still a big thing, but not the first thing."
To French, winning basketball games is only a way of measuring progress towards more important goals'not how his team performs on the court, but how they perform over the course of every player's life, long after they have given up competitive basketball.
When games are not going so well, French has been known motivate the team by questioning what kind of doctors, lawyers, and mothers his women will be 30 years after the clock runs out. He believes that athletic scholarships should do more cover players' college expenses and that his coaching responsibilities go beyond turning his players into the best athletes they can be. So while he is proud that former Gauchos like Lisa Crosskey, Erika Kienast '92, and Becky Brown '93 went on to play professional basketball in Europe and the Pacific, he is more proud that Kira Anthofer '89 is a marketing director for local McDonald's and was Miss Tall USA last year; that Brown is an executive with Enterprise Rent-a-Car; that Susie Matthews '92 is a physical therapist in Flagstaff; and that Krista Gannon '93, who was the 1994 NCAA Woman of the Year for California, will graduate this year from Stanford Law School'just to name a few examples.
The coach considers himself as much an educator as any professor, but one with an advantage few teachers have. A professor has a few hours per week over a single quarter to influence a student, while the coach's players invest an average of 3,000 hours in his program over the course of their college careers.
With a training regimen that emphasizes communication skills and ethical principles, French inverts the priorities found in most competitive athletic programs. "He wants his team to perform at the highest possible level," says Robert W. Kuntz, UCSB Assistant Chancellor and a fan of the program. "First as caring, concerned, contributing human beings; second as high achieving students; and third as fierce competitors on the basketball court."
The Gaucho recruitment pitch promises top high school athletes to turn them into "givers rather than takers." Gauchos are required to perform community service and visit schools and youth groups, teaching basketball and being role models to local children. They adopt needy local families at Christmas. Even when French asks for money for his program, it likely isn't for something like a larger travel budget, but for something like an outreach coordinator so that his team can spend more time with local schoolchildren.
"We don't use the win word around here. We talk about excellence. We are asking our women to have excellence become a habit for them in lots of areas of their lives," French explains. "Basketball is merely a vehicle for us to work on that principle of developing excellence individually and as a group."
French adds, however, that the program's philosophy does have direct impact on the court. "Most of the skills, philosophies and principles that our program is based on far transcend basketball. But they also help our basketball team be a much more functioning, effective group of people."
The Program
Whether they are sharpening offensive and defensive skills in the gym or building strength and endurance on the track, Gauchos are constantly seeking to exceed their own expectations, over and over.
"Let's practice what we preach!," shouts Cori Close as the team sprints past. Checking her stopwatch with one hand and pointing to her heart with the other, she adds, "No limits! That comes from in here!"
Close '93, who was the first athlete to win UCSB's Distinguished Senior Award, is one of three assistant coaches aiding French in his quest. The others are Barbara Beainy '92 and Tony Newnan '92. They are the only Division I team in which all four coaches have returned to their alma mater. (See box)
The uniqueness of French's program begins with the young women he recruits from high schools'but only if their life goals equal their court skills.
"Coach French knows the type of person he wants for this program," says sophomore Stephanie Shadwell, recruited from El Cajon Christian High School. "He will take a better person over a better athlete."
Impressed by the team's potential and French's philosophy, some of the most sought-after high school athletes have chosen Santa Barbara despite offers from dozens of other schools. "It is a unique approach that makes sense to a lot of bright young women," French explains.
Consider Kristi Rohr, who begins at UCSB this year. Rohr was not only three-time Santa Barbara County Player of the Year, but also graduated from Santa Ynez High School with a 4.4 grade point average and does volunteer work through her church. When French visited her family, Rohr entertained them with 30 minutes of classical piano.
"I was thinking, I want to be like her when I grow up," he remembers.
Although she had many other offers, Rohr says she chose UCSB because of the coaches' dedication to their program and their seriousness about winning a national title. "They are on their way to the next level," she says. Rohr also loves French's philosophy. "He cares about you as a person, as well as a player. He wants to know how you are doing and what your goals are."
Even before his philoophy hits the boards, French lays out the concepts in three weeks of classroom sessions.
"Obviously the women will have different communication skills, different work ethics, different tolerances for synergy," he explains. "We sit down before practice starts and give them a lot of scenarios about how this philosophy works."
Lady Gauchos will constantly hear shouts of encouragement from their coaches and teammates. The last across the line gets more support than the first. Comments are always positive and the coaches take extreme pains that what they say not sound negative even by comparison to other comments. If two players collide, say diving for a loose ball, they make sure to apologize before bad feelings can begin.
"Some kids come in with the ability to talk with others about issues that are really important. Some are petrified by the idea," French explains. "We need to teach them how to say things without being accusatory and use a good tone of voice."
Other teams may use team-building exercises, but not to the same extent, says Close. "To have to grow as people, to have their lives touched by teammates, to learn to communicate at the tough level that we do, brings the college basketball experience and the college experience in general to a whole new level," she says. "Mark is one of the few people to demand the whole package."
As a result, the women of the team are just as close off the court. They live together, study together, and if one wants to go to the movies, they very likely all go.
Gauchos are taught that their personal best cannot come at the expense of their team members, an issue that can plague men's teams. "Many male athletes want to score a lot of points, to have tremendous statistics and be the lead scorer on the team, to be the one who is most highly publicized."
Highly competitive women athletes can sometimes be just as self-centered. "They may have been in [high school] programs where their coaches were primarily focusing on them, with mom and dad keeping track of every single point and going nuts if the scorekeeper missed a rebound," French explains.
But he adds that it's really so natural for women to cooperate that more often he has to remind his players to shoot. "They want to be part of the team. They want the affiliation, the friendships, that strength of a group striving to meet goals. So you have to make some women understand that scoring a lot of points is really what the team needs. If I was coaching a men's basketball team I doubt I would have to contend with that issue."
Alexander keeps both in perspective. The 5'6" guard leads the team in points, but emphasizes the importance of cooperation among, rather than competing between her teammates. A team that is so competitive internally "might be successful up to a point," she says. "But they will never be the best."
"Most women approach the game of basketball differently than men do because I think most women approach life differently," French supposes. "Women show their emotions much more freely and openly than men do, whether we are talking about athletes or non-athletes. You can use that within a team concept, if your women understand how to control and channel it to be very productive."
French meets weekly with every student on the team. At these half-hour, individual meetings, French talks with players about their games, their schoolwork, their lives. If two players are having trouble resolving conflicts between them, French will bring them in together to mediate. French's own manner of speaking to players, individually and as a team, demonstrate the kind of exceptional communication skills found in the best managers. He listens intently. He probes with sensitivity. He apologizes when necessary.
Gauchos are required to spend four hours per month during the off-season doing community outreach, either individually or as a team. Most of them do this as part of the Gaucho Outreach program, which last year visited almost 30 elementary schools. "Two of our players will go and talk about basketball, but they also talk about gangs, staying in school, what it is like to be a woman doing things that are still a bit unusual in terms of aggressiveness and being physical," French says.
French also sets very high academic standards for his players. Their academic statistics are paraded in the team literature. Over the course of his 18-year coaching career, French has graduated 98 percent of his athletes. Since 1987, 16 players have been honored as Big West Scholar Athletes more than any other team in the conference. On campus, members of his team have taken home UCSB's "Golden Eagle Ring", awarded to the male and female intercollegiate athletes with the highest grade point average, four out of the last six years. The six players who graduated last year had a combined GPA of 3.36.
French's coaching style has earned the admiration of Paula Rudolph, who as UCSB's Title IX Coordinator is responsible for gender equity issues. She nominated French last April for a staff citation of excellence (he was one of ten to receive the award). "He is able to motivate without controlling, and to push his athletes without making them feel attacked or diminished in any way," she wrote. "Women who are coached by Mark French leave UCSB knowing that they can rely on themselves, that caring for others is ultimately more important than winning, and that they can push themselves without sacrificing other values they hold dear."
The Game
At home games in the UCSB "Thunderdome," the bleachers are filled with young families. One benefit of the Gaucho Outreach program is that local children bring their parents to watch the team. Attendance, which averaged about 60 per game when French took over the program, now averages 1,000 or more.
UCSB English Professor Steve Allaback grew up on men's basketball, but through watching the Lady Gauchos he has become equally passionate about the women's game and rarely misses a home game. "The overwhelming sense that I get watching Gaucho women's basketball is a kind of controlled recklessness," he says. "It's very exciting: fast, furious, fun and fascinating."
On the court, the teamwork and communication skills French teaches translate into a formidable defense and an excellent fast-break game. In contrast to men's basketball, where brute power and dunk shots dominate the action, the women's game tends to be marked by more finesse and more attention to the fundamentals. When Amy Smith receives a pass at the post, she can turn, jump and shoot with tremendous grace. Erin Alexander is amazingly accurate with her 3-point shots fired from beyond the key. More than anything else, however, the Gaucho's strength is that by knowing and trusting each other so much, they achieve levels of awareness and synchronization in their teamwork that other programs can only pay lip service to.
Alexander points out that this coordination gives the Gauchos a powerful edge. Even when playing the most competitive teams in the division, they know that even if they can't match opposing players one-on-one, they can still out-cooperate. "As a team, we blow them away," she says.
"We play so aggressively on the court that the other team sometimes seems truly intimidated. They can hardly believe that our courteous and respectful young women so can be so hard on the court," Allaback adds. "They play hard defense, get the ball, and push it as hard as they can to the other end of the court, keeping the other team on the defensive all the time."
But Allaback, who is UCSB's faculty representative to the NCAA, also admires the way the Gauchos demonstrate their intelligence and sensitivity on the court by always being respectful of their opponents. "When they lose, which is the real test of the character of a team, they don't sulk. They might be disappointed, but they are never bitter or hostile," he says.
One reason French is so obsessed with philosophy is that he doesn't want women's basketball to imitate the worst excesses of men's basketball. As the women's game increases in popularity and two professional women's basketball leagues get set to begin in the United States, he says, "I'd like it to be equal, but that doesn't mean we have to have all of the bad parts, too. I think we can learn from the men's basketball experience nationwide and try to stay away from that."
What French wants to avoid is the "trash-talking, referee bumping, on strike-because-I'm-only-making-$1.6 million per year kind of athlete that dominates our sports pages." He cannot see the logic of rewarding bad manners and outrageous behavior on the court, then expecting fans to act differently in daily life.
"It is okay to scream and yell and be an idiot on the basketball court, but not okay to do that on the street? I don't understand that. I don't think we are teaching the right lessons," he complains. "Too many sources in our society [tell a child] that if you dribble well you can get all of this adulation and still be able to be any kind of person you want. It seems counterproductive to both the individual and society."
(French has also been known to ask students in the stands to refrain from yelling insults at visiting teams.)
"To me, one of the biggest reasons it is important to win basketball games is because I think we are moving in the right direction here in terms of what sports should be all about," he adds. "I'll bet there are a lot of UCSB alumni coaching little league, elementary and high school teams. For them to hear about the success we are having in our program is great, but also for them to get a glimpse into how we are going about winning all of these games might encourage them to do it in a way that I feel would be more beneficial to society."
The Coach
The 18th Century essayist John Ruskin once said, "The greatest reward for a man's hard work is not what he gets from it, but what he becomes by it."
French has adopted the quote—with modifications—for his program. It is one of the many useful aphorisms, from ancient Greek philosophers to corporate management gurus, which the coach is constantly collecting to guide inspire himself and his team.
French was raised in Bakersfield, where his father coached high school baseball for 35 years. When he came to UCSB, he majored in political science, but playing varsity basketball for two years under Coach Ralph Barkey and pitching baseball for four years for Coach Dave Garrie. After earning his BA in political science from UCSB in 1973 he went to University of the Pacific, where he would eventually earn his Master's in physical education.
He was assistant men's baseball coach at UOP when he was offered the position of head coach of their women's basketball program in 1979. French admits that the first women's basketball game he saw was as the head coach of one of the teams playing. He isn't proud of that, but it wasn't unusual at the time. He never would have guessed how much he could learn from his players at the same time he was teaching them.
"I was a fairly typical male athlete of my generation, who prided himself on not showing emotion. [Now] I am moved to tears and show it on a fairly regular basis," he says. "I think I am a better human being than I was 20 years ago because I have learned to show people that I care."
By the time French returned to UCSB in 1987, he had already turned two college programs around. After posting five winning seasons at UOP, French was named Nor Cal Coach of the Year. He moved to Idaho State in 1983, and rebuilt their women's basketball team. The UCSB women's basketball program had begun in '72, but after several years of rebuilding, UCSB had it's first Division I winning season in 1990-91 and hasn't looked back since.
Would French have been as successful with his approach if he had stayed in men's sports? He admits that it is easier with a women's program. But he points to other UCSB coaches with a very similar philosophical approach. "Greg Wilson, an unbelievably successful men's and women's swimming coach, has a philosophical belief that is very similar although the way he puts that into practice is different because swimming is a whole different venue," French says.
The Test
The strength of Gaucho teamwork was tested last spring. Although they were Big West regular season champions with a 22-5 record, including a 12-game winning streak, they lost in the conference tournament March 10 to University of the Pacific by only a single point in the last seconds of double overtime. Doubling the blow, they were not chosen to play in the NCAA tournament, which their season record should have assured. Instead, they were offered a slot at the National Women's Invitational Tournament in Amarillo, Texas.
Then on March 12, 1996, the team was shocked to hear that Erin Alexander's longtime boyfriend Jeff Rio had been killed in an accident that rainy morning on US 101 near Gaviota. Rio was a popular and respected assistant football coach at Santa Ynez High School who would be mourned by 5,000 at his memorial service. A devoted fan of the Lady Gauchos, he once gave each player a rose after a tournament defeat. He was scheduled to begin at UCSB this fall.
"He was a great young man whose approach to life far transcended football," French remembers. But the coach adds, "Even if we hadn't known Jeff so well, it still would have been a great tragedy for the team because we all cared about Erin so much."
As soon as they heard the news, players and coaches crowded into the Goleta apartment where Alexander lives with several other players. Over the coming days, they took turns looking after Erin and studying for finals, while condolences poured in from the community which had become so fond of these women.
"It made us realize that basketball is pretty close to the bottom of the list when it comes to the grand scheme of things," Alexander recalls. But she agreed with team members who felt Rio would not have wanted them to abandon their post-season opportunities. It was Carl Rio, Jeff's father, who brought Erin to school for her first practice after the tragedy.
Eight days later in Texas, Gauchos played wearing bracelets bearing Rio's initials and football jersey number, 66. "I knew it wasn't going to be like any other game," says senior Amy Smith, Alexander's teammate and roommate, "that it wasn't going to be easy to stay as focused or positive as it normally is.
After UCSB's first-round loss to LSU in overtime, Carl and Mary Ellen Rio flew to Texas to be with the team. With emotional and physical exhaustion taking its toll, the Gauchos fell 12 points behind in the first half of the semi-finals, against Illinois State. Alexander missed shot after shot, but teammates kept passing her the ball and in the last 14 minutes she scored on all but one of her attempts. UCSB caught up and with less eight seconds left, Alexander fired from beyond the key. The team held its breath while the ball circled the rim before finally dropping through the net to win the game by a single point.
That gave the Gauchos a chance for the second-place consolation title. But they would have to face Western Kentucky, a team that had been a regular at the NCAA tournament for a decade and three times had gone to the Final Four. Undaunted, UCSB took an early lead, only ceding the advantage to W. Kentucky once in the first half. Alexander was again playing at the top of her form.
"I was thinking about him a lot," Alexander says about Jeff Rio, "but because I was playing well it gave me a kind of peace."
Alexander made 27 points, becoming only the second Lady Gaucho to pass 1,000 total points by her junior year. Team captain Dio Aguinaldo finished eleven points and seven assists in the game. Co-captain Lauren Goldstine racked up eleven points. Amy Smith scored fourteen. Stephanie Shadwell and Amy Hughlett each scored four. Sasha Scardino scored six. When it was over, the Gauchos had won 77-61.
Alexander was honored as the tournament's top scorer, and more importantly, she was given the NWIT's Jack Hall Award for spirit, pride and leadership. As the crowd gave her a standing ovation, she stepped onto the court arm-in-arm with Carl and Mary Ellen Rio.
With six new players on the team and ten out of 15 either freshmen or sophomores, the 1996-97 season will test the consistency of the Gaucho program. Alexander says she "doesn't see a loss on the schedule."
Coach French's goal is a national championship in the next five years. An NCAA title would really give him a chance to influence young coaches.
But no matter how many championships the program may bring home in years to come, the 1995-96 season will remain the Gauchos ' proudest, even if it will also be remembered as the saddest.
"I've been coaching 17 years and have had lots of experiences. None of them even came close to the sense of awe that I have for these women and what they were able to go through, coming out of it with such magnificence," French says. "I was proud of them first because they dealt with it, and second that they dealt with it so effectively that they were able to go out and do something else that was tremendously important to all of them. That was a double win."
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