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March 3, 2004 :: Home This story is part of "Tourney Titans," a special section profiling the top players and teams in the history of the Class 1A state basketball tournament. |
Blessed With Success Mount Baker standout Susan Anderson, voted all-time best player, has legendary work ethic on, off court By SCOTT SANDSBERRY YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC When then-Gov. Booth Gardner proclaimed a statewide Susan Anderson Day in 1986, it didn't come as much of a surprise to Jim Freeman.
Over the previous six weeks, the girls basketball coach at Mount Baker High School in tiny Deming had seen his star player's photograph splashed all over USA Today, which named Anderson the national player of the year. She also earned top player honors on the Gatorade All-America team. Freeman had been barraged by calls from college recruiters all over the country, each looking for an inside track on signing the 6-foot-2 Anderson to a full scholarship. She ultimately signed with defending national champion Texas, where she started for four years. So when Freeman was asked to speak at the Susan Anderson Day ceremony in Seattle, he had the perfect opening line: "Geez, for the last month, every day has been Susan Anderson Day." So is today, in a sense, with the announcement in this edition that a panel of 22 experts voted Anderson the top player in the 28-year history of the Class 1A state girls basketball tournament. She was voted No. 1 for the reason there was once a statewide Susan Anderson Day: Although basketball was just one aspect of a life wrought of true perspective, her work ethic was all-day, everyday. She got up hours before she had to go to school, so she'd have time to go run three or four miles for conditioning and work on shooting -- right-handed and left-handed -- before coming to school. "Her dedication to the game was constant," recalls Carla Hoines, one of her Mount Baker teammates. "She always stayed after practice and shot more. She took practice very seriously." Pat Gavin and Dennis Richardson, who coached her on a Yakima-area AAU team -- for which Anderson would have to make an eight-hour round trip to weekend practices or games -- recall her in glowing terms. "The most wonderful person in the whole wide world, in my eyes," Gavin says. "Work ethic? Unbelievable. And always had a smile, didn't matter if she was working really hard or getting her butt kicked. Her work ethic was tremendous." Adds Richardson, "She'd hustle until there was nothing left. She gave all she had, and most importantly, she helped teammates: She made the people around her better basketball players. She was unselfish, she'd communicate -- just a coach's dream. "Even more so, if another person made a mistake, another player, she pumped them right up. She was the first one to give them a pat on the back and say, 'Let's go play.' " And could she ever play. In that summer after her freshman year, her Yakima-based AAU team finished third at nationals -- and the word was already out about this kid from a wide spot in the road up in Washington state. "Every college coach was there to watch us play, because of her," recalls Richardson, the team's college-aged coach. "Every major college coach was right behind our bench. You don't think that was intimidating, being 22 years old and having (Texas coach) Judy Conradt sitting right behind you?" Nothing much intimidated Anderson, largely because of a confidence she attributes largely to her Christian faith and the work ethic passed down by her parents. (Her father, Art, was an all-state star on Mount Baker's 1958 state-championship boys team.) And she listened to everything she was taught, such as when Freeman began to teach her the proper form on a jump shot. "I told her, 'First of all, when I teach you a move, do it correctly and do it slowly and do it often, so the correct form becomes part of your muscle memory," recalls Freeman. When she started for the Mountains as a freshman, he says, "You could just see it: She would get the ball, turn slowly, slowly put her elbow in and slowup go up for a jump shot. OK, now we're ready to speed it up. "She wanted to do it so correctly, she was so coachable, and as a result her shooting form was really good." But, for Anderson, the scores and the games were all part of the experience. Her opponents often became her friends, just because of the way she was. One year, after the Mounties' fans gave the players roses after they qualified for the state tournament, Anderson in turn gave hers to one of her toughest competitors, Lynden Christian center Jamie Sipma, and that began a sort of tradition. In the tournament, Lynden Christian had edged Mount Baker by a point but -- because many in the crowd spilled onto the court in postgame celebration -- the Lyncs were unable to do much sportsmanlike hand-shaking with the Mounties. So, before Mount Baker's next game, Sipma and the Lyncs personally delivered flowers to the Mount Baker locker room. "Susan and I had a great friendship -- great rivals on the court, but off the court one of those great relationships," Sipma says. "We're both Christians, and I think that cemented things for us. Mount Baker and Lynden Christian were huge rivals -- so it became, within the post positions, an opportunity for a lot of heated battles, and just the intensity of playing in the Whatcom County League." Today, Susan Anderson is Susan Soares, living with her husband, Ro -- like herself, a former professional basketball player -- as full-time missionaries running an Athletes In Action camp for largely impoverished children in Brazil. After her four-year stint at the University of Texas, Anderson played four years of professional ball, three of them in Brazil and one in Japan. It was during her Brazilian pro career that she met the 6-foot-8 Ro Soares, who shared both her love of basketball and her Christian faith. Their camps provide opportunities for kids of lower-income families who might not otherwise ever have the chance to experience athletics. "A lot of the sports here are for kids who can pay," she says in a telephone interview. "It's amazing, using sports and seeing what it can do. Sports doesn't necessarily change your lives, but seeing kids have something to do, and working together, and learning principles about the Bible and how it can change their lives, to encourage them to have a different life." Soares knows her own life -- specifically, her level of athletic success -- was different than most players could even dream of, even had she stopped playing after high school. By that time, she had led Mount Baker to four state trophies, had set a state-tournament career scoring record (355 points) that stood for 17 years. But what might have created a raging ego in another athlete never made a dent in her humility. "I think I was pretty naive to it all, and I think God protected me a lot -- not thinking it was a big deal, just feeling like it was kind of a present from God," she says. "I had worked hard for a lot of years, but a lot of other people worked hard, too. "That I wasn't necessarily better than all of them, but that God had given me this gift." She still has it, too. Hoines, now the junior varsity coach at Snohomish High School, takes her players to summer basketball camp at Lynden Christian, and occasionally camp organizers put together a game between Lynden Christian alumni and the Snohomish varsity. "Two summers ago, we got Susan to come in and play against them, and she still has it," Hoines says. "It was good for our kids to see someone have the success and have family, and still be competitive -- and to understand that you can have all those pieces. "You can be a great friend, a wife, a mother, and still have that competitive edge. As soon as she's on the floor and the buzzer goes, that light goes on. She can be holding her 18-month-old son one second, and be on that court a second later and be right there, wanting to post you up, understanding the game instantly." Still a player. Still the best the Class 1A tournament has ever seen.
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