Well-rounded athletes show success

There’s a secret to Rob Collins’ success at East Valley.

Well, not so much a secret as a built-in head start – kind of like starting a game of Monopoly owning Connecticut, Vermont and Oriental avenues along with a handful of houses.

While most girls basketball coaches look to find ways to build team chemistry in preparation for the season, Collins’ East Valley Lady Knights arrive pre-formulated – a little late to the party sometimes, but that’s like passing Go and collecting $200 before tossing the dice.

You see, a huge portion of Collins’ basketball squad plays for Gabe Escobar’s soccer program and, in fact, have been playing sports together for years before they ever get to East Valley.

“It works for me,” Collins laughs. “I don’t know why, to be honest, that we get more kids coming to basketball from soccer than anyone else in the (Great Northern) League. But we do, and it means the kids get here with a strong sense of team and a great team chemistry.”

Junior standout Hannah Burland dismisses talk about team. “We’re a family,” she says.

And that’s part of it. Burland and her sophomore sister, Elle, starts for the Knights as do twin sisters Maddie and Skylar Bastin – for both soccer and basketball. Sister acts are a regular feature at East Valley.

But it’s more than that.

In an era where club coaches urge young athletes to specialize and concentrate their efforts in one sport, East Valley still embraces versatility.

Multi-sport participation is institutionalized at East Valley and it’s part of the DNA of each program. It goes all the way back the late Howard Dolphin, the legendary athletic director who started the school’s track and cross country programs.

Dolphin always encouraged EV athletes to turn out for multiple sports. If a kid played football, he’d encourage them to wrestle and turn out for track if they weren’t already playing basketball and baseball. It was his mission in life to get kids to play sports and some of his best athletes were kids he pulled in from the school’s halls.

It was the same as girls sports grew – a well-rounded athlete was a well-rounded athlete.

It helps that coaches, too, work multiple sports.

The fact that the culture is so engrained at East Valley is a fitting legacy.

But multi-sport participation only gets a coach a foot in the door. What he or she does with the athletes they get is the other half of the great equation.

And Rob Collins has his own take on how to coach a team.

Collins has worked as an assistant under a number of coaches – including a couple seasons as a volunteer assistant at Eastern Washington University under former coach Bill Smithpeters – each with varying degrees of intensity during a game.

Collins has found what works for him.

During a game, he’s serious – rarely sitting down and, if he does, never for long. But he rarely raises his voice and only then to be heard over the ambient noise.

During a practice, like he was Monday, he’s dressed to work on basketball: a T-shirt and gym shorts. Because, well, he has the legs for it.

“I’ve worked with guys who get so worked up that you don’t know if they’re going to make it through the season,” he said. “I’m not that kind of a guy. I think the game has to be fun for the kids.”

So Collins maintains a sense of fun about the game. Practice sessions are heavy on the workload, but light on the attitude.

“Kids work hard and they give up a lot to play a sport,” he said. “It’s dark when they get here and it’s dark when they leave. They put in long hours.”

Collins’ teams work hard and are regular state tournament participants.

In other words, it all works.