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Washington State Paradise Jam: Reef Division
St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands Kamie Ethridge, 1986 Wade Trophy winner for National Player of the YearNov 5, 2018
"Why is
Kamie Ethridge in Pullman, trying to build a successful
Washington State program, something no one else has been able to do? It's because her boss sold her on the job.
"I tell people all the time, nothing was really attractive (about the WSU job), until I met (athletic director) Pat Chun," said Ethridge.
The challenge is immense.
Washington State has not had a winning conference record since the 1990-91 season, and just two winning seasons in the past 22 seasons. The Cougars were twice 17-15 under June Daugherty, who was let go after last season, her 10th as WSU's coach. Daugherty missed part of the season with health issues, and there were issues among players.
But Ethridge is used to winning. As a senior point guard at Texas, she
led the Longhorns to a 34-0 record and the 1986 national title, the first NCAA Division I women's team to finish a season undefeated. Ethridge, 5 feet 5, was named the national player of the year and then led the U.S. team to Olympic gold two years later.
She began working as an assistant basketball coach in 1987 and began working her way up the college ranks before landing the job as an
assistant at Kansas State under coach Deb Patterson in 1996 and soon become the associate head coach. Ethridge stayed for 18 years.
"I know it was not the smartest thing ambition-wise, and you should be looking (for jobs) sometimes with your resume ready and sending it out but I was so invested, and I got to do everything," she said. "I had a lot of ownership in it, but I stayed too long. Then, when I really wanted to leave in the later years, my name wasn't as hot."
When Patterson was let go at Kansas State after the 2014 season, Ethridge realized if she wanted to become a head coach at a major program, she would first need to become a coach at a mid-major. She got that chance at Northern Colorado, leading the Bears to an 83-44 record in four seasons.
"We can't always control if the ball goes in the basket, we can't always control if we're better than maybe a top-five Oregon or a top-two Stanford, but what we can control is we walked in and we played our guts out. We played as hard as we could and we got better," she said.
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Excerpts from an article by Scott Hanson, Seattle Times