Hoop Dreams

BY SEAN RAMSDEN

Cast an eye toward the rafters of D’Angola Gymnasium and you’ll realize that Kean University has been home to a lot of good women’s basketball. The rows of championship banners hanging proudly above the polished wooden court tell the story of a program that ascended to great heights in the 1970s and through the 1980s, culminating in an NCAA Division III Tournament Final Four appearance in 1987.

Winning has once again become the norm at Kean under current Head Coach Michele Sharp, who was recently named New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) Coach of the Year for the second-consecutive season after leading the Cougars to an outstanding 2003 regular season with a 15-3 mark in conference play and a 20-7 record overall. Under her guidance, Kean has compiled a 40-17 record over the last two seasons, capturing one conference crown and two postseason bids, including a berth in the NCAA Division III tournament in 2002.

When the NJAC titles began to dry up in the 1990s, so too did the vaunted reputation of women’s basketball at Kean. Sharp inherited a Cougar program that had become a shell of its former self, but immediately began rebuilding from the ground up, and as D’Angola’s most recent NJAC Championship banner bears witness, she has restored the program to a level unseen on campus in years. This resurgence, she says, was mostly a matter of getting her players to believe in her and in themselves.

“We had to change the philosophy of the program,” she explained of what she found when she arrived at Kean in 1998. “The whole mentality of our team was wrong. We were playing not to lose rather than to win.”

Sharp had already logged a successful collegiate coaching record and was determined to carry that same level of success to Kean. After a year at the helm at Swarthmore (Pa.) College in 1987-1988, Sharp took over at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., turning a club that had struggled to a 9-14 mark in 1988-1989 into a 22-2 powerhouse in just two seasons. In 1992, she moved on to Manhattan College in Riverdale, N.Y., and the increased expectations that come with a higher-profile Division I program. By her fourth year, Sharp had guided the Lady Jaspers to the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference championship and the NCAA National Championship Tournament. After leaving Manhattan in 1998, she was encouraged by former Associate Director of Athletics Pat Hannisch to apply for the head job at Kean. “I knew what passion Pat had for the program she helped build as a coach, and that piqued my interest in the job,” she said.

Sharp hit the recruiting trail, selling Kean's academics, the team's tradition and her own vision of the program's future to prospective players. She let them know that if they just wanted to play in nice uniforms or wear a team sweatshirt around campus, this was not the program for them.

Before long, Sharp was able to draw her brand of players to Kean. As she did, she witnessed the transformation of their collective work ethic. “I think there are people who fear success, because it heightens expectations and requires greater personal sacrifice,” she said. “But once it clicked in their minds what they had been working for, and what they wanted to get out of it, it all came together.”
It happened in Sharp’s fourth season in 2001-2002, when the squad claimed its first league title since 1991 and a berth in the NCAA Division III Tournament.

This winter, Sharp and her club set their sights on even higher goals. “These student-athletes are quality players and people both on and off of the court,” she said. “Their strength of character is what has propelled us back to the top of the league.” Indeed, that is where the Cougars arguably are today, having captured the number-one seed in the conference tournament.

Everything old is new again inside D’Angola Gym. Winning never goes out of style, and Sharp has made those championship banners fit like an old pair of jeans. When it comes to women’s basketball at Kean, they just feel right.