For over 21 years, players have come and gone for
the Whitworth Lady Pirates, but the one constant has been head coach Helen
Higgs. Before Higgs took over as the Pirates head coach in 1993, she was a
player at the University of Oregon where she was a three-year starter and
eventually became a basketball player in Germany. Upon her decision to
give up her playing career, she went into coaching making stops in Germany as
an 18-under head coach, an assistant at Gonzaga then an assistant at Utah.
However Higgs never set out to coach the game.
“It wasn’t a career goal of mine. I think some
people when they’re playing, they start to see themselves as a coach, and that
was never me. I went overseas to play basketball and back in those days you
wanted to keep your amateur status, and I coached to get paid.” Higgs said.
“When I came back [to the United States] I started coaching college and
realized that this was the level I wanted to coach.”
Throughout her 21 years as a head coach for
Whitworth, Higgs has yet to lead the Pirates to a championship however she does
hold a .596% winning percentage over the course during her tenure which remains
an impressive accomplishment. To consistently have a winning record over
21-years requires not just good players, but good coaching. Of course, being a
good college coach on the collegiate level means not just getting players to
perform well during game-time but possibly the more difficult thing to
accomplish is to get together a bunch of young men or women who grew up in
various different places to work together and be a team.
“We try to be team first. We try to [build] a sense
of unity and as of family as much as you can. We usually do a lot of team
building activities, and we usually have something once a week where the team
can go like ‘hey! Let us get to know each other more than as basketball
players’. I’m willing to give up some practice time for them to have that team
time.” Higgs said.
It is said that we do not find our calling in life
but our calling tends to find us. For Coach Helen Higgs who 30 years ago did
not set out to be a coach she has found her calling. In her 21 years as the
head coach for Whitworth Women’s basketball she has become the first Northwest Conference
women’s basketball coach to cross the 300-win threshold. In addition, she has
two conference championship wins, three conference tournament wins, three NCAA
tournament appearances, and has received conference coach of the year honor
three times. Those are some pretty impressive accomplishments for someone who
didn’t see herself as a coach.
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