They Bless The Tie That Binds Former Usf Star, Husband Make Marriage Work As Co-Coaches For Dons

They run practices together, plot game strategy together and watch film together. They usually eat lunch together, too, and at the end of the day, Bill Nepfel and Mary Hile go home together.

Not that there’s anything untoward about that. You see, Mary is actually Mary Hile-Nepfel. She and Bill have been married almost 10 years now and are in their eighth season as cohead coaches for the University of San Francisco women’s basketball team.

There are other coaching couples in the country - Sue and John Huffman at Sacramento State, Stephanie and Frank Gaitley at St. Joseph’s, Dianne Nolan and John Breslin at Fairfield. But in all of those cases, the wife is the head coach and the husband the assistant.

The Nepfels are the only married co-coaches in NCAA Division I women’s basketball. They don’t, however, find it all that remarkable that they ended up working together, sharing an office and sitting at desks only a free throw’s length apart.

“I don’t think this is weird or that unusual,” said Bill, who at 43 is eight years older than Mary. “People are going to meet spouses who have common interests. You’re just naturally going to share things. It’s not that hard.”

Their common interest, of course, is basketball. They met at Long Beach State in 1982, when Bill was an assistant there and Mary, who had recently completed a record-setting playing career at USF, was hired as a graduate assistant.

The story is that upon seeing Mary walk out of the basketball offices, Bill turned to another assistant and said, “I’m going to marry that girl.” True, says Bill, who also admits to having said that many times before.

But this time, a romance actually developed.

“It was an easy transition,” Mary said. “We spent a lot of time together, whether we were out evaluating players or scouting games or maybe going to lunch together on campus. We did that for a year and a half and then it started to get more serious.”

They kept it quiet, though, and didn’t tell any of the players or head coach Joan Bonvicini until Bill was hired as head coach at Hawaii in 1984.

“After you first tell people, they always say, ‘yeah, we knew all along,”’ Bill said. “But they didn’t. There might have been two or three people who knew.”

Mary stayed at Long Beach State for a year after Bill went off to Hawaii. They got married in the summer of 1985 and Mary joined her new husband in Honolulu as what she called a “very, very, very part-time” assistant.

She later became assistant athletic director at Chaminade and was working there when Father Robert Sunderland, then the athletic director at San Francisco, called in 1987 to ask if she and Bill were interested in coaching at USF. Bill had just been named Big West coach of the year after guiding Hawaii to a 21-7 record.

“They kind of left it up to us to arrange a format,” Bill said. “We figured we had three options: I be the head coach and Mary my assistant, or Mary be head coach and I’d be her assistant. We just didn’t feel comfortable with those two. Or, we could be co-coaches.

“Mary was ready to be a head coach at that time and I didn’t think it would make sense for me to go back to being an assistant. So it wasn’t that hard of a decision. They were agreeable to that.”

So far, so good. They’re still married and still coaching. After splitting two games on the road a week ago, the Lady Dons were 9-4 this season and the Nepfels had a career record of 103-99, including a tie for the West Coast Conference championship in 1992.

They divide their coaching duties according to their strengths and likes. Bill does the scheduling and makes the travel arrangements. Mary coordinates the recruiting, arranges for equipment and sets up the summer camps. While Mary does most of the game plans and scouting reports, Bill gets more involved in the Xs and Os.

“I’d like to have 150 plays,” Bill said.

On that, Mary takes the other extreme.

“I’d rather have two or three and get good enough at them where the players have confidence in them,” she said. “I guess that kind of comes from my playing days.”

And what days those were. Hanging on a wall at one end of Memorial Gymnasium are the names of four USF players whose numbers have been retired. Right up there alongside Bill Russell’s No. 6, K.C. Jones’ No. 4 and Bill Cartwright’s No. 24 is Mary Hile’s No. 15. Hile’s 2,324 career points are the most by any San Francisco player, man or woman.

So when Hile talks to her players, they listen.

“I did,” said Tami Adkins, who played four years at USF and is now an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount. “You’re there in the gym every day and you see her name up there with Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, obviously you have to be very good to be in their company.

“You have a lot of respect for somebody like that who worked so hard and wanted to come back and be at their alma mater. I think that’s good for the school.”

The Nepfels admit they weren’t as good sharing the job their first season as they are now. As they got better at it, they developed a feeling for when to speak up and when to defer to the other.

“In our huddles, it’s about 50-50,” Bill said. “Sometimes I won’t say anything, sometimes Mary won’t say anything.”

“Hopefully, not at the same time,” Mary interjected.

Sometimes they can talk for a few seconds before addressing the team or calling a play. Other times, one or the other acts on instinct.

“We just hope I don’t decide to go zone when Mary is calling man-to-man,” Bill said.