 |
BACK ON THE FARM: Allister,
Vidal, Robinson and Smith now serve as assistant
coaches for the Cardinal varsity teams they played
on. |
Linda A. Cicero |
For the past five years,
steeplechase specialist David Vidal pumped up his red blood
cells by training at an elevation of 8,000 feet for several
weeks with his cross-country teammates. This year, he organized
the Sierra training camp as the team’s
assistant coach.
“There’s a lot going on that athletes don’t
see—logistical things like food and hotels,” says
Vidal, ’05. “All the details are my job this year.”
Vidal
is one of a handful of former student-athletes who now
are assistant coaches for the varsity teams they used to
play on. They bring a particular perspective to the job,
and they mostly enjoy fielding the personal questions they
get. “Being
closer in age to the recruits, I can relate to them, and
can just sit down and chat with them,” says assistant
softball coach Jessica Allister, ’04. “They’re
interested in where they’ll be living and what they’ll
be eating. Things like, ‘What was it like? What made
you choose Stanford?’”
But there’s a flip
side to the questioning. “Every
time they ask me what it was like, they make me feel like
I’m
50 years old,” says assistant women’s basketball
coach Charmin Smith, ’97, MS ’00. Candice Wiggins,
a junior guard, “will be like, ‘What did you dance
to? Was the electric slide out when you were here?’ And
I’m like, ‘Candice, what are you talking about?
That was out in the ’80s.’”
Smith, who played
professional ball with the Portland Power, Seattle Storm,
Minnesota Lynx and the Swedish basketball league, was coaching
at Boston College when she got a call from her former head
coach, Tara VanDerveer. “I came here for
the [job] interview, and I was in my suit, with the little
briefcase I owned,” she recalls. “I was going to
be all professional, but 30 minutes into it, Tara was like, ‘Do
you want to go to the hotel and change?’”
Smith
says she wanted the job (“How could you not do
it?” former teammates implored), but she needed to know
she’d be coaching as an equal. “It was very scary
for me,” she says. “Tara’s always been my
coach, and I felt a lot of pressure. In coaching, the way
the staff interacts is very important, and I didn’t
want to be here and just be a player. If I was going to
be here, then I was going to be a coach and have a voice
that would allow me to make a contribution.”
Smith says
her worries were for naught, and within a few days of arriving
on campus in May 2004, the coaching staff had made her
feel that her input was needed and respected. Today her
responsibilities include recruiting players, scouting opposing
teams, occasionally going one-on-one in practice and editing
a newsletter for “C
Club” varsity alumni.
Last year Smith also launched the Katrina Assist Pledge
Program, which raised more than $18,000 to help Habitat
for
Humanity build homes for residents of New Orleans’s devastated
Ninth Ward.
Just down the hall from Smith, assistant men’s
basketball coach Nick Robinson has two chunky rings displayed
on his desk, reminders of the Pac-10 titles he and his
teammates won in 2000-01 and 2003-04. Yes, fans still ask
about the buzzer beater he launched from 35 feet to defeat
Arizona on February 7, 2004. (“How did it feel hitting
that shot? Great. How did it feel being under the Sixth
Man Club? Heavy.”)
Like cross-country’s Vidal, Robinson, ’02, MA ’05,
says his daily schedule as an assistant coach is long on
details. “As
a player, it’s, ‘Okay, this is when practice is,’ and
you show up. I didn’t pay any attention to scheduling,
practice times or facilities. But now there’s lots of
planning involved.”
When she was the softball team’s
starting catcher, assistant coach Allister helped take
the Cardinal to two College World Series. After graduation,
she coached hitters and catchers at the University of Georgia
and played summer ball with the New England Riptides of
the National Professional Fastpitch League. Then came the
call in June from her former coach, John Rittman. “He
is a hitting guru,” she
says. “I
learned so much from him when I played for him, and I can’t
wait to see the other side, coaching with him.”
This
fall, Allister shares an office with Rittman. While he’s
on the phone with recruits, she often fields the text-messaging
contacts. “It’s the way that high
schoolers communicate, and it’s crazy,” she says. “You
look at it, and it’s, like, three letters, and you’re
like, ‘What could that possibly be?’”
As
they begin their first seasons as coaches, Allister and
Vidal say one of the biggest challenges is feeling like
a novice among masters. Shortly after he was hired in June,
Vidal found himself in a meeting with Stanford athletics
legends. “Dick
Gould, Skip Kenney, Bill Walsh,” he recalls. “One
new coach got up and said, ‘I’ve only been here
for a year,’ and then gave his opinion. And I remember
thinking, ‘I’ve only been here for 36 hours.’”
Basketball’s
Smith, who has a master’s degree in
civil and environmental engineering from Stanford, says
she could have been a project manager in industry by now,
making twice as much as an assistant coach. “But I wouldn’t
be waking up every day as happy as I am.”
Her advice
to young players? “I tell them, ‘Don’t
ever put yourself in a position where you look back on
your college experience, and say, “What if?” You
want to be able to walk away and say, “I was committed
and I was invested.” That’s all you can ask for.’” |
