Near the end of ’00s, University of the Pacific coach Lynne Roberts called me, after receiving a tip about sisters who were playing junior college ball in the Bay Area.
“The Zasly twins”, I said. Laura and Katie were standouts at Aragon HS, less than a mile from here.
“I knew you’d know”, she said.
At the end of the conversation, I said: “They can help someone, but not us.” (The Zaslys went on to play at Notre Dame de Namur in the PacWest Conference.)
Three or four years later, Pacific signed a post from nearby St. Mary’s HS in Stockton. From the first practice I attended in August, I loved that kid, though it wasn’t until 10 games passed in Kendall Kenyon’s freshman year that Roberts gave her more than mop-up minutes. Kenyon finished at Pacific as the Tigers’ all-time leader in rebounds and blocks.
“You are a keen judge of talent”, Coach said once.
As it turned out, my best call wasn’t about any of Roberts’ players, but about Roberts, whose first game as the coach of the WNBA Los Angeles Sparks is tonight, a preseason exhibition against the Golden State Valkyries at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
In the first week of December 2006, during Roberts’ first year in Division 1 at Pacific, a very good San Diego team visited. Meanwhile, the Stockton Rotary conducted a kids’ chess tournament on the Pacific campus.
Perfect, I thought. I was writing the West Coast Conference then, and San Diego was more than equal to Gonzaga at the time. I can work at the chess tournament, watch San Diego blast this little Big West Conference team, and never have to see Stockton again.
Pacific, with its first-year head coach and a freshman point guard, stuck closer to San Diego than expected. I said: There’s a story here. I spent the next 8+ years driving to Stockton to cover Pacific, then another 9-some years doing the best I could with Roberts’ University of Utah teams — until she left Utah last December to take the job with WNBA Los Angeles. I didn’t know what the story at Pacific was going to be, but it’s this.
Coach Roberts has reached the top of her field, the highest league in the land, assigned with the Sparks as a reclamation project. That’s what she does — Pacific and Utah were both last-place teams in their respective conferences, and Roberts won championships at both schools.
The Sparks were 8-32 in 2024, so she ought to feel right at home. “That’s what I signed up for. My job is to build a franchise, to create a culture that [players] can latch onto, make players want to be where you’re at”, said Roberts.
She likened it to recruiting at the college level. “Persuading [free agents, or current players reaching the end of their deals] to go with me, it’s the same as recruiting and retention, conceptually.”
I would’ve preferred the Valkyries hired her (if not Coach VanDerveer), but Coach thinks she’s in the right place. “This is where I should be. My goal is to be an LA Spark for a long, long time”.