Heartening event

There were a lot of broken hearts when June Daugherty was fired as the women’s basketball coach at Washington last March, the day after a loss in the NCAA tournament.

After 11 seasons, six NCAA appearances, three NIT berths and a 191-139 record, her players and four recruits, including Katelan Redmon of Spokane, were shocked with the Husky decision.

A month later Daugherty, who also had a 123-74 record in six years at Boise State, signed on with rival Washington State. She replaced Sherri Murrell, who resigned after five long seasons stretched the Cougars’ streak of losing seasons to 11.

Obviously tonight’s Husky-Cougar game at Friel Court is another step in pushing those broken hearts into the past.

But there’s more, a real broken heart.

Arriving at a clinic for a physical in May, Daugherty suffered sudden cardiac arrest, something that only one out of 20 survive.

“I worked out every day, I lived a healthy lifestyle,” Daugherty said. “It couldn’t happen to me.

“It can.”

With the attention focused on Daugherty’s first matchup with her former team, Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center and Bellevue’s Hope Heart Institute are sponsoring the game. The first 1,000 fans through the door receive a free”Cougs Have Heart” T-shirt.

“We thought the game would get a lot of attention, and we wanted to use this as an opportunity to attract more people and make a difference,” Daugherty said. “It’s a great cause. It’s been a real eye-opener for me.”

After the teams play in Seattle on Feb. 3, the coach will be the keynote speaker at a fund-raising breakfast.

As for the game and facing the coach that recruited her, Redmon, a 6-foot-1 guard/forward out of Lewis and Clark, said, “I really don’t think it’s going to be any big deal. You’ve got to go into it acting like it’s any other game. You can’t let the stuff off the court affect you on the court.”

Redmon initially said she wouldn’t attend UW after Daugherty was fired, but the school wouldn’t let her out of her letter of intent and new coach Tia Jackson won her over.

“I’m glad I’m a Husky,” she said. “I like it here. It’s a good place to be. You can’t really focus too much on the past. You have to move forward and look to the future.”

Both teams hope the future is brighter. After getting clobbered twice on a roadtrip to the Bay Area to open the Pac-10 schedule, UW is 5-9 and WSU is 3-10.

“There have been some struggles but we’re coming along,” said Redmon, who leads the Huskies in scoring at 12.1 points a game. “We’re growing as a team. By next year we’ll be back where we were. We’re really coming along.”

Daugherty is excited to see the players she hasn’t seen since they visited her in the hospital, but her attention is on the Cougars.

“The focus is on my team,” she said. “I’m doing the best job I can of getting my team ready. Our approach as a coaching staff is to prepare our kids, improve on our system, make sure each day we’re improving. That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve always done. It will be the same.”

Still, it’s a big game and a chance for the Cougars to end a 24-game losing streak to the Huskies and Daugherty to win her 23rd straight in the series.

“This is the Apple Cup of women’s basketball,” Daugherty said. “I’m looking forward to it.”