WBB: COACHING MATCHUP YEARS IN THE MAKING

By Rich Myhre

By Washington Huskies

January 25^th, 2018

Back in 1985, Mark Trakh was early in his basketball coaching career. Though he would soon become a college coach, he was then the head girls’ coach at Brea Olinda High School in Brea, Calif.

One day Trakh was officiating at a citywide elementary school tournament, though of course he was also checking out potential players for his high school program. His attention was drawn to a fifth-grade girl who was tall and very talented, so afterward he wandered over to say hi.

Little did he foresee the relationship that would begin that day.

WBB: COACHING MATCHUP YEARS IN THE MAKING

The girl was Jody Anton, who today is Jody Wynn and the first-year head coach at the University of Washington. She would go on to play for Trakh in high school, helping Brea Olinda to three California state championships. Later, when he became a college head coach, first at Pepperdine University and then at the University of Southern California, she would be his assistant coach for 13 seasons.

On Sunday, when Wynn’s Huskies host a USC team coached by Trakh at Alaska Airlines Arena, their paths will intersect once more. It will be the latest chapter in a remarkable tale of personal and professional friendship that reaches back more than 30 years.

Trakh, said Wynn, has been like “a second father figure for me.” Over the years they have studied game films, debated strategies and spent time in the gym so Wynn could improve her game. It was Trakh who convinced her that she could play college basketball, and later he persuaded her that she could become a coach herself.

“I owe the educational opportunity I had at USC and then my entire career to him,” Wynn said. “None of it would’ve happened (without him). He not only coached me, he guided me and he mentored me. And he allowed me to have a career that I absolutely love.”

“I’m very proud of what Jody’s accomplished,” Trakh said. “To see the way she’s honed her talents and improved to where she’s now the head coach at the University of Washington, yeah, it’s a great thrill.

“For me,” he added, “it’s a little like seeing your daughter out there. I’m just really, really proud of what she’s been able to do.”

It all began in Brea, a city of around 40,000 residents located some 30 miles southeast of Los Angeles and five miles north of Anaheim. The funny thing is, Wynn was never supposed to be a basketball player back then. At the tournament where she met Trakh, she was playing just for fun. At the time, her true sport was swimming.

“I was in the water before I could walk,” said Wynn, who began competing when she was 5 and was soon showing considerable promise. “My whole goal was to be an Olympic swimmer someday.”

It was Trakh who helped change her mind. They reconnected when he coached basketball in her seventh- and eighth-grade PE classes, and he also invited her to summer workouts and occasional summer-league games with his high school team. By the time she enrolled at Brea Olinda as a ninth-grader, basketball was No. 1.

In Brea, which had just one high school at the time, “being a Lady Cat was one of the most prestigious things for a female athlete,” Wynn said. “I wanted to be a part of that program and the coaching legacy that (Trakh) had there.”

In that community, she said, “he was like a legend. Everybody knew who he was.”

Wynn became an immediate starter at Brea Olinda, and she continued to excel throughout her four years. By her senior season she was one of the state’s top players, renowned for both her physical skills and a relentless desire to win.

“She was a really intense competitor,” Trakh said. “That kid just refused to lose.”

Though usually a shooting guard, the 6-foot Wynn could play anywhere on the court. That was evidenced in one of the team’s state championship games when she played all five positions. The last position she played was point guard, and it happened in the fourth quarter because the Lady Cats’ regular point guard was ill with the flu and had to leave the game.

Recalled Trakh, “I looked at Jody and said, ‘Can you play point guard?’ And she said, ‘I guess I’m going to have to.’ The other coach saw that she was the point guard and they tried to press her, but she was handling the press, (dribbling) behind her back, and we ended up winning the game.”

Still, there were sometimes moments of tension between the fiery player and the impassioned coach.

“He coached me hard … and by the time of my junior and senior years of high school we had almost a love-hate relationship,” Wynn said. “He demanded so much of me and I was very, very stubborn. I loved him like a father, but then I would get so upset at different things.”

Ultimately, though, Trakh “made me stronger and tougher, both mentally and physically. He kept pushing me to be the very best I could be.”

After high school, Wynn went on to play four years at USC, helping the Trojans to one Pacific-10 Conference title and three NCAA Tournament appearances. In her sophomore season, Trakh became the head coach at Pepperdine. They continued to keep in touch, and he was soon suggesting she might become a coach, too.

He evidently convinced her because Wynn graduated from USC in the spring of 1996, and the day after her commencement ceremony she was at Pepperdine, in the city of Malibu north of Los Angeles, signing a contract to become a Waves assistant coach. She was 22 years old.

“(Trakh) afforded me an incredible opportunity to coach on the court right away,” Wynn said. “He taught me to strategize. He taught me how to run a program and how to manage a team.

“He always told me that I’d be a head coach by time I was 28. I’d say, ‘I don’t know, I’ve got a lot to learn.’ And he’d say, ‘No, you have what it takes.’ He groomed me from Day 1 and he allowed me to blossom.”

At the outset, Trakh said, what stood out about Wynn as a young coach was “her teaching ability. She knew how to impart her knowledge to her players. She was just a great teacher, and I saw that when she was 22 years old and my assistant at Pepperdine. The kids respected her and they listened to her.”

She also showed prowess in recruiting. As she was getting settled in her new job, she asked Trakh about the schools Pepperdine typically competed against for players. He mentioned a few of the Los Angeles area’s mid-majors, among them schools like Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Northridge.

“And she said, ‘Nah, we’re going to recruit against UCLA and SC,’” Trakh said with a chuckle. “I looked at this 22-year-old coach and told her, ‘It’s not that easy, Jody.’ But son of a gun if she didn’t bring us some players that were recruited by what was then the Pac-10. She won some recruiting wars.”

During their eight seasons together at Pepperdine, “we turned the program around,” he said. “We won four (West Coast Conference) titles, and Jody was very integral in that.”

Wynn remembers a game at Wisconsin-Green Bay in the 1998-99 season, her third at Pepperdine. Before the game, Trakh announced that he had flu and would be unable to coach. Which, Wynn later learned, was a fib.

“He told me I was the head coach for that game,” she said, “and then he sat on the very end of the bench. I don’t think he said a word the whole game. But he was giving me the opportunity to be a head coach on the sidelines.”

In 2004 Trakh became the head coach at USC and Wynn went with him as an assistant coach. They were together for another five seasons before Trakh took a two-year hiatus from coaching and Wynn was hired as the head coach at Long Beach State. Trakh returned to coaching in the fall of 2011 at New Mexico State and stayed for six seasons before being re-hired at USC on April 21, 2017.

Four days earlier, Wynn was announced as the new head coach at Washington.

Sunday’s game will be the first head-to-head coaching showdown between Wynn and Trakh, and it will be anything but just another game.

“I met her when she was in the fifth grade, and then you fast-forward 30 years and we’re coaching against each other in the Pac-12,” Trakh said. “I don’t know what you call it. Is it irony? I don’t know what the word is, but it’s funny how life works.

“Yes, it’ll be a little surreal,” he admitted. “I’m sure once we get into the game it’ll just be coaching, but it’s definitely a surreal feeling.”

“We never wanted to coach against each other because we’re each other’s biggest cheerleader,” Wynn said. “So it’s going to be really strange to peer down the sideline and see him there … because I’m still his biggest fan.

“I’m going to be so emotional, I just know. To me, it’s almost like you’re coaching against a legend … because I think he’s one of greatest coaches I’ve ever been around. You coach against great coaches throughout the Pac-12 and at so many other great programs, but he’s my only legend.”

Since Wynn was hired at Washington, Trakh has made a point of watching UW games whenever possible. He knows the Huskies were hit hard by graduation after last season, and that this year’s team is mostly young and inexperienced. The result so far has been a sub-.500 record and a place near the bottom of the Pac-12 standings.

But Trakh has also seen “that Jody has her team right now overachieving. They’re in every game, and the players are working hard and playing hard for her. Her teams always play hard, they give 100 percent and they have a really, really good bond with her, which I think is awesome.”

In the coming years, he went on, “I have no doubt that she’ll be a great coach at the University of Washington. This is her opportunity, and I know she’s going to make the most of it.

“I’ve never had any doubt, knowing her from the time she was a child to now, that she was going to be very, very successful. She’s just a great role model for the kids that she coaches. And you could always see that determination. She just works very hard and she does things the right way.”