For the past five years, steeplechase specialist David Vidal pumped up his red blood cells by training at an elevation of 8,000 feet for several weeks with his cross-country teammates. This year, he organized the Sierra training camp as the team’s assistant coach.
“There’s a lot going on that athletes don’t see—logistical things like food and hotels,” says Vidal, ’05. “All the details are my job this year.”
Vidal is one of a handful of former student-athletes who now are assistant coaches for the varsity teams they used to play on. They bring a particular perspective to the job, and they mostly enjoy fielding the personal questions they get. “Being closer in age to the recruits, I can relate to them, and can just sit down and chat with them,” says assistant softball coach Jessica Allister, ’04. “They’re interested in where they’ll be living and what they’ll be eating. Things like, ‘What was it like? What made you choose Stanford?’”
But there’s a flip side to the questioning. “Every time they ask me what it was like, they make me feel like I’m 50 years old,” says assistant women’s basketball coach Charmin Smith, ’97, MS ’00. Candice Wiggins, a junior guard, “will be like, ‘What did you dance to? Was the electric slide out when you were here?’ And I’m like, ‘Candice, what are you talking about? That was out in the ’80s.’”
Smith, who played professional ball with the Portland Power, Seattle Storm, Minnesota Lynx and the Swedish basketball league, was coaching at Boston College when she got a call from her former head coach, Tara VanDerveer. “I came here for the [job] interview, and I was in my suit, with the little briefcase I owned,” she recalls. “I was going to be all professional, but 30 minutes into it, Tara was like, ‘Do you want to go to the hotel and change?’”
Smith says she wanted the job (“How could you not do it?” former teammates implored), but she needed to know she’d be coaching as an equal. “It was very scary for me,” she says. “Tara’s always been my coach, and I felt a lot of pressure. In coaching, the way the staff interacts is very important, and I didn’t want to be here and just be a player. If I was going to be here, then I was going to be a coach and have a voice that would allow me to make a contribution.”
Smith says her worries were for naught, and within a few days of arriving on campus in May 2004, the coaching staff had made her feel that her input was needed and respected. Today her responsibilities include recruiting players, scouting opposing teams, occasionally going one-on-one in practice and editing a newsletter for “C Club” varsity alumni. Last year Smith also launched the Katrina Assist Pledge Program, which raised more than $18,000 to help Habitat for
Humanity build homes for residents of New Orleans’s devastated Ninth Ward.
Just down the hall from Smith, assistant men’s basketball coach Nick Robinson has two chunky rings displayed on his desk, reminders of the Pac-10 titles he and his teammates won in 2000-01 and 2003-04. Yes, fans still ask about the buzzer beater he launched from 35 feet to defeat Arizona on February 7, 2004. (“How did it feel hitting that shot? Great. How did it feel being under the Sixth Man Club? Heavy.”) Like cross-country’s Vidal, Robinson, ’02, MA ’05, says his daily schedule as an assistant coach is long on details. “As a player, it’s, ‘Okay, this is when practice is,’ and you show up. I didn’t pay any attention to scheduling, practice times or facilities. But now there’s lots of planning involved.”
When she was the softball team’s starting catcher, assistant coach Allister helped take the Cardinal to two College World Series. After graduation, she coached hitters and catchers at the University of Georgia and played summer ball with the New England Riptides of the National Professional Fastpitch League. Then came the call in June from her former coach, John Rittman. “He is a hitting guru,” she says. “I learned so much from him when I played for him, and I can’t wait to see the other side, coaching with him.”
This fall, Allister shares an office with Rittman. While he’s on the phone with recruits, she often fields the text-messaging contacts. “It’s the way that high schoolers communicate, and it’s crazy,” she says. “You look at it, and it’s, like, three letters, and you’re like, ‘What could that possibly be?’”
As they begin their first seasons as coaches, Allister and Vidal say one of the biggest challenges is feeling like a novice among masters. Shortly after he was hired in June, Vidal found himself in a meeting with Stanford athletics legends. “Dick Gould, Skip Kenney, Bill Walsh,” he recalls. “One new coach got up and said, ‘I’ve only been here for a year,’ and then gave his opinion. And I remember thinking, ‘I’ve only been here for 36 hours.’”
Basketball’s Smith, who has a master’s degree in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford, says she could have been a project manager in industry by now, making twice as much as an assistant coach. “But I wouldn’t be waking up every day as happy as I am.”
Her advice to young players? “I tell them, ‘Don’t ever put yourself in a position where you look back on your college experience, and say, “What if?” You want to be able to walk away and say, “I was committed and I was invested.” That’s all you can ask for.’”
