It is my duty to inform The Haters out there that this column deals, at least in part, with females who play basketball. I thought I’d warn them in case reading about that subject matter would cause a sudden spike in their blood pressure. So, you guys, don’t read it and I’ll just assume that y’all don’t like sports or maybe you don’t think girls should play sports.

Almost all of the girls I have coached over the years fit neatly in the category of Great Kid. But there’s this one whom I would be proud to call my second daughter. Catherria Turner and my daughter, Darlene, were co-captains of the only championship girls’ basketball team in Amphi High School history. They were best of friends (and still are) and as competitive as the day is long.

Catherria (pronounced Cath-uh-REE-yuh; you’d be amazed at how many different and truly unique ways there are to butcher it) is simply the best player I’ve ever seen. While Tucson is not exactly the hotbed for girls’ basketball in America, it has produced some great players, including Paula Pyers and Rashida Jeffery (who both played at USC), Sybil Dosty and Julie Brase. Those other players were outstanding; Catherria was almost magical. She once scored 47 points in a game in which she took only 22 shots. She averaged 29 points, 11 rebounds and 10 steals a game for an entire season. When teams would try to press us, we’d get the ball in to Catherria and she would dribble past all five defenders, one by one, coming tantalizingly close to each, before heading to the basket. Teams that did so would press us exactly once.

She was recruited to Oregon and led the team to the NIT championship as a freshman. Then came turmoil in the program that led to a coaching change and Catherria transferred. She was recruited by Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, who would later be named national coach of the year after leading Baylor to the NCAA championship. But Catherria had promised her grandmother that she would get her college degree in four years, and in order to make good on her promise, she ended up at Oklahoma State. While there, she was among the top in the nation in assists and minutes played, was team captain and was named to the Big 12’s all-academic team.

After college, she set out to become a coach. One of her goals was to become a head coach by the age of 30 (a rare feat, indeed). She started out at a place called Simpson College in Iowa. From there, she spent time at the University of Maine and then across the country at the University of Portland. While at Portland, she was named Miss Black Oregon USA and also found time to earn her master’s degree.

While still in her 20s, she was named head coach at Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif. After piecing together a competitive squad using kite string and gumption, she applied for (and got) the job at Dixie State University, a Division II school in St. George, Utah. So, at the ripe old age of 30, she’s already on her second college head coaching job, with the sky definitely the limit. (One odd note: The athletic director who hired her at Dixie, Jason Boothe, is a graduate of Canyon Del Oro High School.)

Just to show how incredibly crappy life can be, Catherria met this guy while she was playing at Oklahoma State. Nice guy, head on straight, respectful as all hell. It slowly blossomed into something and was well on its way to becoming Something when she graduated and began her coaching odyssey. To his eternal credit, he wouldn’t be deterred by the thousands of miles between them. They maintained a semblance of a romance and when she got her first head coaching job at Holy Names, he figured it was time to make his move (literally). He decided to leave his job in Houston and move to Oakland to start a new career and be near his honey. A few days before the planned move, he dropped dead of a heart attack.

“Twenty-seven years old,” explains Catherria’s father, Stevie. “Athletic, in good shape. No drugs, no alcohol, no reason.”

She had to lean hard on her faith to get her through that. I don’t know if she’ll ever be completely over it, but when I saw her recently, she was upbeat and feisty and focused. Ever the sensitive soul, I told her that now that she’s living in Utah, she could become somebody’s Sista Wife.

Right before Christmas, Darlene and I drove to Las Vegas to watch Catherria coach her team in a two-day tournament at The Orleans. (This place is ridiculous. It has a 6,000-seat arena, a 72-lane bowling alley, an 18-screen movie theater, and a full food court—all of which is paid for by lots of old people, one quarter at a time.)

Her team split the two games and for the season is playing right around .500, which is miraculous considering she wasn’t hired until May and missed out on the recruiting season. The other night, I spent six bucks to watch online as her team won the first of three games during a weeklong conference swing through Hawaii. Tough work if you can get it.

This article appears in Jan 9-15, 2014.

20 replies on “Danehy”

  3. Hey A.S. I was starting to wonder what happened to you. I thought someone bolted the attic door shut. Figures someone like you would get all exited by one of Pulitzer Tommy’s award winning girls basketball column. Welcome back.

  5. A.S. Believe me I’m not trying to be a wise-ass. I’m probably the only person on the planet with the exception of this small tribe in north Pago Pago that doesn’t own a smart phone. I carry a Jitterbig cell phone in case my ride throws a belt or does something else that I can’t fix on the side of the road. That being said what exactly is misogyny? Maybe one day I’ll leave the stone age and get one of those things, but I doubt it. You may not believe it but it’s good to have you back. You know how to insult me in style without dragging my mother into it.

  7. Doesn’t make sense to me but I’ll take your word for it. I miss my mother and still think of her often. And don’t tell me I don’t love women. They were created to keep us men in line among other things. My wife of 31 years beats the living s*&% out of me once a month weather I need it or not. If something ever happened to her I wouldn’t last a month. Misogyny surely does not apply to me.

  8. Rancho – you just got trolled by the master. Normally, I divide CW’s comments into 2 categories: 1) “I can’t believe he just said something THAT stupid.” and 2) “Yeah, I CAN believe he just said something THAT stupid”. But if you think Mr. ‘traditional values’ here doesn’t know what a word means just because its got more than two syllables in it, or that he’s incapable of operating a dictionary – you’ve been majorly fooled. You just allowed him to bring up his mom AND his wife for cover (and not for the first time). CW thinks that referring to someone as ‘girly’ is an insult and that the only reason anyone could have for reading a column about a female athlete HAS to involve some kind of prurient (and don’t be fooled by the dumb act – he KNOWS what it means) interest. – that alone makes him a good soldier for the front lines in the war on women. I find it frustrating and sad that someone with his experience can only resort to flinging the same adolescent insults at Danehy over and over.

  9. For someone as sad as myself,I sure get your attention. Why waste your time? ignore me. I can go on for a long time about how wrong you are, but why bother/. No one would believe me anyway. Not that I care. Face it, I annoy you no end and I love it. As far as Tom goes, let me get your know-it-all ass up to date. For quite some time Tom and I got along rather well. Didn’t agree on too much,but exchanged opinions by E-mail. Last August I disproved something he said. I did it in a polite way but that didn’t matter. He stopped answering my E-mails and just blew me off. That really surprised me. I thought he was more of a man than that. Hey Tom, I know you read this. How about responding otherwise these clowns will think I’m B.S. ing them. That’s why I rag on him. And you’re right A.S., I AM a master. At many,many things.

  10. The sad becomes even sadder…Mr butt-hurt has to let the world know how he’s been wronged by ‘THE MAN’ – over and over again; to accomplish, what? Sure, it would be interesting to hear Tom’s side of this but – I DON’T CARE! All I know is that your harping on it for this long tells me all I need to know about you and your right-wing sense of entitlement and playing at looking victimized. That feeling I’m having? – it’s not annoyance, it’s pity.

  12. You peeking in my closet again, Gurnemanz? You can’t even lock horns with someone around here without some other uncivil, Left wing chooch putting his 2 cents in. By the way, you spelled it wrong. If you don’t care, A.S. ,why bother commenting. Talk about sad, look in the mirror. Amuse a sad old man. 1) Who’s picture is that anyway or is it really you? 2) Just what the Hell is an Attic Stattic. Seriously, I looked it up in the dictionary and it ain’t there. As far as THE MAN goes, I’m just curious.

  14. How come you’re not watching football ? Mommy thinks it’s too violent for you? MASTURBATE. But, what do I know. I was talking about an Attic Stattic. You still didn’t answer my questions. Not that I thought you would.

  16. El Snobo, you’re just jealous. Clowns like you are no challenge. Shooting fish in a barrel. Troll? I like that. Better than some of the other things I’ve been called by those “civil” folks on the left.

  19. Tom, thank you for sharing this great story. Always nice to read about driven people accomplishing their goals. She sounds like a great coach and an inspirational force for her students.

  20. Y’all fell for it. CW says some repugnant shit, but he’s not stupid, has impressive turn of phrase and knows how to throw it back in the face of whomever is dishing it out to him. I’m not supporting anything he says, but I do have to say he frequently provokes the socks ‘n’ sandals set into going to great effort to respond to him with cliches and other hackneyed expressions that make a reader embarrassed to have read them, and ashamed for those who wrote them.

    Seriously, “master baiter”???? If you’re in the 7th grade, I take it all back. In middle school that’d be a step up in sophistication from England, France and underpants. Otherwise, you can do better than that.

    And stuff about his mother??? Same deal: you can do better than that.

    Or better yet, do nothing at all. It would be far more effective.

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