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Show era . Spits Ispzit APRIL 2000 mull 3 i THIS MONTH: WOMEN'S RACQUETBALL COAGH DENNIS FISHER ? 1 s f Dennis Fisher recently led the extramural BYU women's racquetball team to its sixth consecutive national title. Cougar Sports Magazine caught up with Coach Fisher to ask him the secret of his success. ,'SNo team at BYU, officially sanctioned or not, has won as many national titles. What do you attribute your success to? m uwij think most of the succes comes from the hard work of the athletes on the team. I put together a very rigorous and very difficult training schedule. We're talking about athletes that get out there and work five, sometimes six days a week. They're non-scholarship; they work out two hours a day and the workouts aren't easy. They really put their heart and soul into it and their dedication to the program that I've developed has really brought about the fruits of their labor. How did vou eet started Dlavine Ml I w and then coaching racquetball? ,4s I got started playing when I got into the military. I spent 22 and a half years in the Air Force and I learned about racquetball when I first got in, and that's where I picked it up and started playing, which was back in 1974. 1 retired from the Air Force and came here to take a position in the athletic department, and because I had such a great love for the game I kind of got hooked up with the team as an assistant coach for the first year and a half. Then when Sylvia Sawyer decided to retire, she asked, along with Lee Gibbons, the director of extramural sports, if I would take over the team. -i What's the most rewarding thing about your job as coach? i Seeing the success of the athletes. There's nothing greater than seeing the success that comes not just with winning, but with them actually being able to conquer the aspects of the game. Seeing a first-time player with no experience come onto the team and turn around and have a great successful year and to have their game progress so rapidly - that's what really brings the satisfaction to me. jf's Do you feel your team can do it again next year? If ft SB Well I can't make any predictions because I don't know who I'm going to have next year. I'm losing my top four women, plus one other gal. So it's definitely going to be a rebuilding year for us. im Do you feel that having won so much that you have a target on your backs from the opposition? I Oh, guaranteed. Everyone's out to beat BYU. It's one of those things that a lot of teams look forward to at nationals-to see how they compare to us. As a team overall, we've had so much success, I would say that BYU has the model team, as far as developmental racquetball at the collegiate level goes. Everyone really looks to us to see how we do every year, and how far we've come along and how many new people we have. I've had a lot of people call me and ask me, 'How do you do it? How do X r& r l s - - & Dennis Fisher you get the kids on the team?' I've talked to a lot of coaches who say they just can't get good women on the team. It's tough to work with 20 to 24 atheletes during the year, it's a tough job with basically just two coaches. It's a lot of work with a lot of time and effort lis Do you think the team both as players and people have garnered respect? I SB We do get a lot of respect from other teams. As a matter of fact, at nationals last week when we were in Arizona, there was a national team from Chihuahua, Mexico. A lot of those players didn't speak very good English, if any English, and a lot of those players were kind of shunned by the U.S. players, with the exception of our team. We had a lot of returned missionaries on our team that spoke really good Spanish and really befriended them. It was just a wonderful wonderful opportunity to make some really good friends across the border. I think they felt much more at ease there at the tournament because they actually had people they could talk to. Q 'I j. i fti Cc fir in iijijwh ui - " mitrmm (UUUUMBUIIII T BRUCE JACOBS HI he year was 1951. North Korea Hi had pushed its offensive beyond the 38th parallel. Electricity was first generated by a nuclear power plant. The King and I opened on Broadway. And BYU won the National Invitational Tournament then the most prestigious honor in college basketball. Just two years previously, a little-known little-known and unheralded coach by the name of Stan Watts took over the basketball coaching job at BYU. At the time, many Cougar fans believed Watts' coaching resume to be less than impressive, and his run-and-gun style unorthodox and risky. Just two years later, Watts made believers of them all and captured national attention by taking the NIT and Madison Square Garden by storm. Led by Joe Nelson, BYU's first All-American, All-American, BYU shocked St. Louis in the first round 75 - 58. The Cougars went on to defeat Seton Hall 69-59 and downed a tough Dayton team 62-43 in the championship game. Fans around the nation were shocked, but in Provo there was pandemonium. BYU had captured a national title, and maybe this Watts fellow wasn't such a bad coach after all. The Cougars didn't fare quite as well in the NCAA tournament that year, though they did beat San Jose State 68-61 68-61 in the first round before falling to Kansas State 54-64 and Washington 80-67 80-67 in the consolation bracket. But nonetheless, BYU had accomplished the impossible and the 1951 will live on in BYU sports fans' minds forever. i 1 1 K 1 15 |