8 minute read
Playing for Peanuts
By Cathy Morrison
“When you break a record, somebody else is going to break that record sometime. But when you’re a champion, you’re a champion for the rest of your life. Your kids’ kids and their kids could come back here in 40 years, and it’s going to say ‘state champions.’ I still draw energy from what we did here.” —Coach Fentriss Winn
At any reunion, you can count on sharing and reconnecting over fond memories. The breakfast gathering of the members of Bishop’s 2001 State Champion Girls’ Basketball Team during Reunion Weekend was filled with stories, connection and abundant laughter.
Amy Dieckmann Sullivan ’01 made those T-shirts for her teammates in a screen printing unit in her art class senior year.
“We decided about three years prior when we knew we wanted to go to the state championship tournament, we didn’t focus on the state tournament, we focused on peanuts. Because we knew that we would take a Southwest Airlines flight to the tournament, and they would give us peanuts when we got on the plane. We’d always say, ‘C’mon! PEANUTS! Let’s go! Don’t let ‘em take away our peanuts!’ And I remember when they went to the state championship, Southwest found out
about it and brought all these peanuts on the flight,” relates Coach Winn.
“You always did a great job setting that vision for us. I remember before ninth grade, we went on a road trip— you took us to Arco Arena to watch a women’s basketball game—and you said, ‘This is where the state championships are won, and we’re going to win a state championship while you’re in high school,’” responds Amy.
The team’s origin goes as far back as when some of the women were only six or seven years old, playing in Coach Winn’s Future Stars program. Others joined in middle school. Over time, the players, coaches and parents became a close-knit band of travelers on summer journeys to far-flung Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) tournaments across the country and eventually to in-season interscholastic games across the county. The ultimate destination: The 2001 State Championship.
Teammates came from as far as Fallbrook to La Jolla, so nearby families hosted the girls in their homes for meals and rest on long school days that culminated in either a late practice or game. Amy shares, “I remember many naps in the afternoons at the Gage’s house before coming back to school for practice and at the Grimm’s house, Kirsten’s mom would always have some sort of amazing treat for us to eat. It was so nice in building that community, particularly for those of us who couldn’t drive all the way home in between school and practice, it was awesome.”
The women and their families agree that the combination of basketball and Bishop’s was a life-changing experience.
“We had no idea what private school was before we met Coach Winn. He’s the one who introduced us to this opportunity. We were—and ARE— in awe that we were able to do this. We had no idea what we were getting into, until we got on campus and saw what the School had to offer, the doors it was going to open and how it was going to prepare us to move through those doors in the future. We’re so thankful we were given that opportunity and we chose to do it. I had known Bree and Mallorie [Winn] since I was nine and to be able to continue to play with them and go to school with them was a huge added benefit,” shares Lindsay Killus Etchegaray ’01.
Amy and Cheka Gage ’01 arrived in seventh grade, with Amy’s family thinking it would be Bishop’s for middle school and then on to Torrey Pines for high school. Cheka says, “I had just always thought, ‘That’s where I’m going to go. I always wanted to go to Bishop’s.’” For Amy, “finding a home on the basketball team” meant that staying at Bishop’s for high school “was a no-brainer.”
Kirsten Grimm ’00 carries the experience forward in her professional life as an educator and administrator, saying, “Basketball was probably the biggest part of my life. I work for San Diego County Office of Education, in the equity department. We often have to tell our ‘why.’ Why we do the work we do. I always start with Coach Winn and basketball—you guys are in the first three slides! My ‘why’ is for our students to expect excellence and support with unconditional love. I got that from Coach Winn. We had the widest range of girls in our club experience and then in high school, I came to Bishop’s, and it changed the whole trajectory. Coach always expected excellence of each individual person, and he supported us all differently with a lot of love. He always expected us to win, we knew that. So that’s what I expect of all the students I’ve ever had—you’re going to win, I don’t care who you are, where your
Then-seniors Cheka, Lindsay, Amy and Brianna
family’s from, we’re going to win! That’s what we do. We win here. It’s really shaped my entire life.”
Coach Winn points out the girls’ basketball program was already strong when he arrived on campus, they just didn’t play against bigger schools. He reminisces, “I remember being told, ‘You can’t schedule the big schools.” I asked, ‘What are big schools?’ ‘Rancho Bernardo, El Camino, Uni.’ I said, ‘Why wouldn’t we schedule them?’ and they said, ‘Because they’d kill us!’ The first three calls I made were to Rancho Bernardo, El Camino and Uni. We had to find out who we wanted to be, and what level we wanted to get to.”
The team’s AAU play gave them experience going against bigger, older and stronger teams. His philosophy was, “If you want to be the best, you have to play the best. One thing Bishop’s kids have that I didn’t bring, you can’t come here academically and not be disciplined to be successful. We had to take that same energy and culture they had toward academics and apply that in our basketball program. We tested ourselves every year. Those seniors won four CIF championships. We’d been to two regional finals. We’d won more than any team in San Diego County in the history of girls’ basketball except for Point Loma at that time. We’d won four league titles; if you get to a regional final, that’s one game away from the state championship. We did that twice, and we could just taste it. This was the last opportunity to win it. We played probably one of the toughest schedules in the country that year.”
Local and national events impacted their senior season, too. As the first generation of students to experience the now too-familiar phenomenon of school shootings, the March 5, 2001 mass shooting at Santana High School in Santee occurred as CIF playoffs were underway.
“Santana voted not to go to the playoffs because their classmates had passed. So, their girls’ team, who was no. 3 in the county, won all these games and didn’t get to go. We decided, ‘Let’s invite these girls to our game. Then we took it a step further and said, ‘We’d like to wear their warm-ups out for our game.’ The team came, and we met upstairs in the health room; they got to hear our pregame, and they gave us their warm-ups. Our girls ran out in Santana warm-ups, and it was just so heartfelt. People picked up on it, and everybody started cheering when they saw it was Santana, knowing they couldn’t play anymore and knowing that kids at their school passed away because of the shooting,” recalls Winn.
Spirited support was key to their performance. Lindsay recalls, “We would pack the gym with people. The boys’ team would dress up for us and be our cheerleaders, and we would do the same for them. From friends to faculty, even Mr. Teitelman (head of school). We had so much support which was so nice.”
Cheka adds, “It was so cool as a player on the team. Everyone loved coming. I think we were fun to watch. It was exciting, there was lots of camaraderie, we got really into it, and we had this whole warm up thing we used to do. We would lock ourselves in the closet, then bang on the door [before running out onto the court]. It was really fun—we had a good time.”
“And that’s not the culture in women’s sports—I would argue anywhere. In college, men’s and women’s sports are very separate. But we had boys from all sports—everyone would come. To be seen and taken so seriously as an athlete was an exceptional experience,” recalls Brianna Winn ’01.
There’s an adage—teamwork makes the dream work—and this team was exemplary. “The best part of our team— we all played our roles and each of us playing our roles made the other person the best player that they could be. We couldn’t do it without each other. We played together so much both in-season and off-season, we could predict, work together and know how to move the ball around the court,” says Amy.
“Cheka was a shooter, and she knew she was ready to play at the point or wing if she needed to. Lindsay was very smart, taking the ball out and making the right decision and ready to be a shooter on the outside when needed. You had to trust that all the people on the floor were going to do their job. The reason we won a championship is that everyone was really good at what they did. We knew each other well, what everyone’s strengths were. We studied basketball, scouting reports, it was a lot. We had to know every position and every single play. We were so stacked that year before, too. It was just one more year of doing that. None of us wanted to leave Bishop’s without what we were trying to get to.
“‘PEANUTS!’” exclaims Brianna.
Reunion Weekend basketball and family time
