Ex-Mead player juggles job, family life at Stanford
TAMPA, Fla. – Kelly Benard Clark allowed herself to think about how things might be different had her family not moved to Eugene, Ore., after her sophomore year, just before Mead won the State 4A girls basketball championship.
But had that not happened she might not be at the Final Four now.
Clark is the strength and conditioning coach for the Stanford women’s basketball team.
“I love seeing athletes progress, see them get stronger, seeing what they can do, getting bigger, faster, in better shape,” she said before the Cardinal’s game with Connecticut on Sunday night in the St. Pete Times Forum. “When you come to a game, you don’t see that.”
Clark traces the start of her career path to her days as a player at Idaho.
“I was a sports psychology major but there weren’t a lot of jobs for a sports psychologist,” she said. “It was such a new field and you have to get a PhD to do anything with it. I also liked our strength coach so I went into that.”
She started graduate school at Sacramento State after marrying Jesse Clark, whom she met at NBC Camps and was a small-college women’s basketball coach. After a year they both became assistants at Cal State Bakersfield. That lasted a year because Clark landed a strength and conditioning job at California, which lasted two years before she hooked on at Stanford.
The difference is that she also has crew and fencing at Stanford. At Cal it was basketball, volleyball, baseball, track and swimming.
Her job is demanding and year-round. With a 3-year-old son and husband who is now an assistant with the Saint Mary’s women, that is difficult.
“Traveling is tough,” she said. “Having two coaches in the family we’re going opposition directions, traveling on opposite weekends a lot of the time.”
Eventually she hopes to finish that graduate degree and teach at the college level.
Her parents returned to Spokane to watch their daughter play at Idaho but Clark usually only sees them when the Cardinal do the Washington road trip.
Had she known their stay in Eugene would be so short. ..?
“Exactly,” she said. “We were going to have such a successful year. … I moved to a team that sucked. You always think, ‘If I would have stayed how would I have developed differently?’
“But you know what? It’s where you are, so that’s fine. It’s fun with this experience, I have a great family, we live in a gym, that’s how you do it. My son already knows how to run around in a weight room and not get hurt. It’s a blast.”
Opposing views
The Tampa Tribune carried a Page 1 story about the support women’s athletics receives from the gay community. It’s kind of an annual story done in communities when they host a major women’s event for the first time.
The NCAA doesn’t enjoy the publicity.
Chuck Wynne, an NCAA spokesman, told The Tribune: “From our perspective, this weekend is about basketball, not social issues. Their arena will be sold out with a diverse crowd, most of whom are there because they love the game or follow a certain team.”
After the story appeared on the newspaper’s website, the NCAA issued an official statement: “To say any NCAA championship appeals to a certain percentage of a particular segment of the population, especially without any scientific backing, is without merit. The truth is each tournament appeals to a core group of fans but that core is as diverse as the American population itself.”
New floor no more
The text message from a Spokane sports fan watching the Spokane Region final on TV was wondering if the Arena had a new basketball floor.
It did – but now it’s at an athletic facility in southern California.
Connor Sport Court, a company in the Upper Peninsula town of Amasa, Mich., is in its third season of supplying courts for NCAA events.
After winning the contract, Connor provided the Final Four portable hardwood courts when the Florida men and Maryland women won. Last year courts were supplied for the men’s regionals and this year the women’s regionals.
The site has the first option on the courts. WNBA teams took two regional courts. At the Final Four, the winning team has the option. Florida bought the court when it repeated last year and had it cut up into 1-x-2-foot pieces, a small logo attached and sold them, according to Andrew Campbell of Connor, who is at the Final Four.
The rep for Connor, which also has synthetic surfaces, in the Northwest is Northern Hardwood in Deer Park.
Tip-ins
Gonzaga assistant Jennifer Mountain is one of three finalists for the Santa Clara job. Also in the hunt are former Washington State and Washington assistant Sunny Smallwood, who is at Nebraska, and California assistant Lindsay Gottlieb. … Idaho’s search for a replacement for Mike Divilbiss, who was pressured to resign last weekend, doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. Area coaches at the Final Four haven’t heard anything about the Vandals’ search other than they expect a woman to be hired. … Junior Kristi Toliver of Maryland, which lost in the final of the Spokane Region, won the Nancy Lieberman Award, which recognizes the nation’s top point guard. Former Idaho player Leilani Mitchell, a Kennewick native who finished her career at Utah, was one of the four finalists in the voting by sports writers across the country.