‘The girls want someone to discipline them,’ says coach Bill Sanchez, who led his basketball team to an unbeaten season in league play. ‘They want to be drilled.’ : He Runs Flintridge Girls Through Hoops

It wasn’t divine intervention that made the girls basketball team at Flintridge Sacred Heart High School play like Heaven on Earth this season. All it took was a young man who had never coached girls and had never coached basketball.

Bill Sanchez arrived at the small, privately funded Catholic school in the fall after two seasons as volleyball coach at Loyola High School. What he found was a group of girls who could play basketball, but were ignorant of its nuances--through no fault of their own.

“They’ve always had the talent here, but the girls were not taught the basic fundamentals,” he said. “The first day when I walked out there I said there’s no way we can ever play, because they just lacked the skills.”

At first, the 26-year-old coach concentrated on the basics. He eased his players into his system instead of hitting them over the head with it.

“It was kind of chaotic because it’s his first year and they were used to last year,” recalled Betsy Sauer, the school’s athletic director.

Said Sanchez: “I think I intruded on them in the beginning. Every week I had to be patient and not try to do too much at once. In about the sixth or seventh week, they started coming together.”

By the end of the regular season, the injury-plagued Tologs (an acronym that stands for “To Our Lady of Great Success”) were down to six players from their eight-girl roster.

Yet they had compiled an 18-3 record, a 10-0 mark in the Horizon League and were seeded second behind Westridge High for the Small Schools Southern Section playoff tournament. Under coach Jesse Quiroz, the team went 10-2 last season and finished second in league before losing in the third round of the playoffs.

Although he had not run a basketball program prior to this season, Sanchez was weaned on the game by his father, Bill Sanchez Sr. The elder Sanchez was an All-American at St. Mary’s College in San Francisco and a draft choice of the old St. Louis Hawks. He also coached at Loyola High for 17 years.

“Bill’s background in basketball is excellent and it’s really shown through because of how he works with the girls,” Sauer said of Sanchez, who also guided this season’s varsity volleyball team to the Horizon League title and a 10-0 division record this season. “He’s done an excellent job here and he’s really professional.”

Sanchez categorizes himself as a motivator and positive thinker.

He realized that he could not address the girls with the same forceful tone he used with the boys. Still, he has managed to get his point across.

“The girls want someone to discipline them,” he theorized. “They want to be drilled. It helped because they weren’t getting that before.”

One of the reason’s for the team’s current success, according to the coach, is “their ability to come down the floor and be very patient. They will pass up a mediocre shot to get a layup. We’re not a great fast-break team. Our game is a more finesse, slowdown type of game. We’re also capable of pounding it out inside the paint.”

Seniors Debbie Shaw, a point guard, and Janice Miller, a forward, both described their coach as “tough” and playfully grumbled about the fact that he stresses running in his practices.

Sauer, however, does not think Sanchez has been unduly hard on the players.

“His expectations are high, but they seem to rise to it,” said Sauer, who attends all the games when she isn’t coaching the swimming team or working at Cal State Northridge toward her masters degree in physical education. “You can just see the development of the team from the very beginning of the season. They work really hard and they put a lot of time in. Every team does, but that team’s been special. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The other girls on the team are Sandi Shaw, Whitney Karm, Katie Ruck, Michelle Molina, Mara Konrad and Sarah Banales. The latter is the daughter of JV coach Joe Banales, whose team went 8-0 in league and 15-1 overall. So the future looks promising.

“The program here is definitely on the upswing,” Sanchez said.

The school’s athletic program has enjoyed steady growth since Sauer, the mother of two preteen daughters, arrived in Flintridge from Cleveland 12 years ago as a one-person coaching staff.

The basketball, tennis, volleyball, swimming and softball teams at Sacred Heart have been successful over the past four years, and a track team is in the planning stages. Sanchez is one coach who does not feel his current responsibility is a step down.

“There are a lot of good opportunities (for male coaches) with girls athletics taking off,” he said. “The administration has been 100% behind me in everything I’ve done. They’re very easy to work for.”

Flintridge Sacred Heart is an independent school that receives no funding from the Los Angeles archdiocese. The campus, which houses 90 of its 320 students, has been situated atop a hill in Flintridge since 1931. The administration prides itself more on its girls’ scholastics than their sweat. The average tuition for one year is $2,850 and about 95% if its graduating seniors matriculate to college.

The athletes are required to maintain both a minimum 2.0 grade-point average and a good-conduct grade in order to compete. The two grades determine the number of extra-curricular activities in which each student can be involved.

“It’s really an academically oriented school,” Sauer said. “The athletes are recognized and the program is supported, but I don’t think it’s overemphasized.”

Sauer’s athletic department is funded through the school budget, which has allocated $6,300 for this year’s program. The money is used to buy equipment, pay officials and rent places to play. Eight of the Tologs’ home games this season were held at St. Francis High, but twice they had to find other accommodations at Rosemont Junior High in La Crescenta and Ramona Convent High in Alhambra, because the St. Francis facility was booked. The rental fee for the two alternative sites was $75 each. St. Francis charges their neighbors just $25 per game.

“They’ve been really good as far as letting us use their facilities,” Sauer said.

There also is a booster club, which helps to subsidize the teams. This year it donated a backboard and rim, attached to a pole. It stands adjacent to a stage in the school’s auditorium. The team can therefore now practice on the parquet floor indoors, instead of on the asphalt outside.

The booster club also is in the process of donating a $6,000 trophy case to house the 33 trophies, five plaques and one loving cup that are now sitting in the school library beside books and the video equipment.

As successful as the basketball team is, however, the girls don’t draw much support from the other students, according to Sauer.

“We’ve been trying all kinds of things to try and generate interest,” she said. “Volleyball is really popular and it’s always packed when we play in our auditorium, which is smaller than St. Francis gym. With basketball, the enthusiasm kind of dies.”