By JERRY ULMER/OSAAtoday
On the surface, last Saturday’s boys basketball matchup between Waldport and Yamhill-Carlton high schools seemed like an ordinary nonleague game.
In the history books it was much more.
The game was the first in Oregon high school sports history featuring two boys varsity teams with women as head coaches.
Last season, Yamhill-Carlton’s Heather Roberts became the first woman head coach for an Oregon boys team in more than 80 years.
This year, Michelle Severson of Waldport and Lourie Hall of Yoncalla High School joined the ranks.
When Roberts saw the Waldport game on her schedule, she said, “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s kind of cool that there’s going to be two women on the sideline.’ And we both have men coaching our girls teams. I think it’s kind of fun.”
The best part, according to Roberts, is that “it’s not really a big deal now” for a woman to coach boys.
“Last year, when I got the job, everyone made a big hype about it,” said Roberts, who has been assisted by former Wilsonville girls coach Cindy Anderson since she took over. “I think with all the stuff going on in the NBA, it’s maybe becoming more normal.”
Severson coached Waldport’s JV boys for three seasons before being hired as head coach in October. She had a good idea of what to expect when she took over.
“When I started being the JV coach, I was a little bit nervous that the boys would be like, ‘Oh, it’s a girl coaching me,’” Severson said. “But it was wonderful. It’s been great coaching them. The guys are so nice. So stepping into the head coaching role is awesome.”
Both Roberts and Severson have extensive experience coaching girls.
Roberts was a head coach for 17 seasons at Ashland, Lakeridge, Canby and Sprague before spending four seasons as the women’s coach at NCAA Division III Southern Virginia University. She returned to Oregon last year and took the job at Yamhill-Carlton with the intention of coaching her sons, Moroni and Malachi, who are freshmen on the team this season.
Severson – a 1998 graduate of Waldport, where she played as Michelle Thueson – assisted in the women’s program at Willamette University for five seasons and was head coach at North Salem from 2009 to 2012. She moved back to Waldport and became the girls head coach for three seasons before assisting in the boys program.
Peter Ellingsen resigned as Waldport’s boys coach to take the job at Newport High School. When the man who was hired to replace him left in the fall, the Irish were in a pinch. So Severson stepped into the role.
Severson reflected on how things have changed since her childhood.
“Growing up as a kid, and I played a lot of basketball, I would go and try to play with the boys during lunchtime in middle school, and they would never want me to play because I was a girl,” Severson said.
With a full season at Yamhill-Carlton under her belt, Roberts senses that the novelty of having a woman as coach has died down around the program.
“It’s so normal now that I just coach the boys. It’s what I do,” Roberts said. “I don’t even know if they even notice anymore. I’m just ‘Coach’ now.”
Roberts won 266 games in 17 seasons at the big-school level with girls teams, leading Lakeridge to a state runner-up finish in 2004. She said dropping down to a smaller school, where coaches share more of their athletes with other sports, was a bigger adjustment than shifting from girls to boys.
Roberts, known to be tough on her players, said she has not changed her coaching style for boys.
“I don’t know if it fits it better, but my personality doesn’t hurt,” she said. “When I went into this, a lot of men that coach girls said to me, ‘I think your personality can carry this off.’ I’ve been around boys, and I have four boys, so I’m not afraid to say things like it is.”
What differences stand out for Severson?
“Girls are a lot more emotional on the surface, and boys are a lot more emotional, like, internal,” she said.
As for Saturday’s game, Yamhill-Carlton, which plays in a higher high school division, rolled to an 82-42 win over Waldport, handing the Irish its fourth loss of the season. On Tuesday, Severson got her first win of the season and as boys head coach when the Irish defeated Monroe 81-78.
A link to KPTV’s coverage of the historic game is here.
