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Friday, January 30, 1998
Rompola puts SMU on women's basketball map
By WHIT CANNING / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
DALLAS -- In the six-plus seasons that Rhonda Rompola has been
women's basketball coach at SMU, the status of the program has
progressed from near-invisible to clearly indelible.
Nevertheless, longtime friend and former teammate Nancy Lieberman-Cline
said she remains one step ahead of Rompola on one point.
"Yeah, she's done OK on the job," Lieberman-Cline
said. "But she still can't beat me at stickball."
With a laugh, Rompola said, "Just disregard that, it's
an East Coast thing."
Stickball prowess aside, the Mustangs have in Rompola a coach
who is always striving to push her team toward the big goal of
national recognition. Nothing is ever over for Rompola. And since
she took the SMU job before the 1991-92 season, she has transformed
a program that had previously recorded only three winning seasons
into a perennial contender in the conference and for the NCAA
Tournament.
"That's our goal for this program now," she said.
"To reach the point of playing on a national level, and then
stay there."
The Mustangs, 14-4 overall, 6-1 in the Western Athletic Conference
Pacific Division, face Tulsa tonight in Oklahoma in the beginning
of the second round of WAC play.
No SMU women's team has been ranked in the Top 25, but several
of Rompola's teams -- including this one -- have played well enough
to receive votes. Recent history suggests that it is a matter
of time before SMU gets into the Top 25. Before the 1997-98 season,
Rompola's record at SMU was 114-63, including one trip to the
finals of the Women's National Invitation Tournament (1993) and
three appearances (1994-95-96) in the NCAA Tournament.
The Mustangs missed the tournament last season after going
19-11, but this squad has waded through a tough intersectional
schedule and is battling Hawaii for the lead in the Pacific Division.
Among the high-profile encounters this season are a victory
at Tulane and losses at Louisiana State and Texas Tech, plus a
76-74 loss to Louisiana Tech at Moody Coliseum.
"Actually, she's done a fantastic job," said Lieberman-Cline,
soon to embark on her own coaching adventure with the Women's
NBA's Detroit Shock. "She waited a long time for this, and
displayed a great deal of loyalty to SMU. She certainly had other
offers.
"When you see her teams play, you see a lot of Rhonda
in them -- very intense, very competitive. She has recruited well,
but she also has a knack for taking players that maybe weren't
on everyone's Ôblue chip' list and building a very strong
team with them."
For Rompola, 37, who transferred to SMU after playing on two
national championship teams with Lieberman-Cline at Old Dominion,
it has sometimes been a long journey.
"The first time I ever came here was for a Dallas Diamonds
game," said Rompola, who grew up in Sayreville, N.J. "There
really wasn't any culture shock, because I immediately fell in
love with Dallas and SMU."
The immediate status of the women's basketball program, however,
was another matter.
"That part was a little bit of a shock," Rompola
said. "At Old Dominion, we were the biggest game in town.
Norfolk is a much smaller place, more like a college basketball
town, and we would draw 5,000 to 6,000 fans, which was more than
the men drew.
"This was a much different situation. The football team
was in the -1/8Eric-3/8 Dickerson--1/8Craig-3/8 James era, and
that was the big game in town. Even on campus, it seemed that
few people were even aware that we had a team."
After transferring and sitting out a year, Rompola became SMU's
first All-American, in 1981-82, a season in which she set several
SMU records that stand today: total points (683), scoring average
(21.3), and free-throw percentage (86.3). She also set a since-broken
record by pulling down 278 rebounds (8.8 per game).
The team finished 18-15, the most successful in the history
of the program until Rompola's first season as coach.
After graduating with a business degree, she played one season
with the Diamonds. When the Women's Basketball League dissolved,
Rompola returned to SMU as an assistant to her former coach, Welton
Brown.
The next few years were a little thin.
"Our budget was always among the smallest around,"
Rompola said. "And along with everybody's else's, it got
even smaller when the football program got hit with the death
penalty, because there was just less money allotted to athletics
in general.
"It was almost like nobody even knew the program existed.
We did all our own marketing and promotions, even arranging our
own halftime entertainment. When we went on the road, we traveled
on the day of the game to save money."
After 14 seasons, Brown retired, and Rompola became coach for
the 1991-92 season.
Conditions did not immediately improve, but the team did, going
17-12 for its first winning year since Rompola had been a player.
The next year, the Mustangs won 20 games.
Surrounded by more powerful Southwest Conference programs,
Rompola waged a successful recruiting battle using a simple message.
"We just sold the school and the city and the program,"
she said. "Basically, a small school with a strong academic
reputation, a great campus, and a great big city with endless
opportunities.
"Also, the coach is a little tough sometimes, but the
staff cares about you."
School officials apparently are sold on Rompola.
"Rhonda obviously has all the qualities necessary to be
a successful head coach: She's a good recruiter, she's disciplined
-- and therefore, the team is disciplined -- and she's a team
player, easy to work with," athletic director Jim Copeland
said.
"Also, she's tough, and I think that's a very necessary
ingredient."
It is an ingredient that has been there since Rompola was a
youngster playing the gyms and sandlots in New Jersey.
"Growing up, I was always playing some kind of sport,"
she said. "Whatever was in season -- basketball, softball,
whatever. And I always played with the guys.
"Sometimes we'd play basketball all afternoon after school,
then meet again and play after supper. And it was always with
the guys, that's just how I grew up."
It was also there at Old Dominion.
"A lot of times, we would go against each other one-on-one,
in practice," Lieberman-Cline said. "It would get competitive.
We would just beat the crap out of each other.
"We were best friends, roommates, but we would sometimes
go two or three days without speaking. That's how intense it was."
Although Rompola said that "sometimes I can be a pain
in the butt," she prefers to regard it as "persistence"
in pursuit of a worthy goal.
"Sometimes, you have to be patient when you're trying
to change people's minds about something," she said. "That's
something I had to learn.
"When I first got into this business, I was running around,
yelling at officials, bugging people continually about things
I wanted. I've calmed down a lot, but I still believe that if
you want something accomplished, you have to pursue it relentlessly."
"I feel good about the future, and it's not about X's and
O's, but about the way we treat the kids in this program. I'm
very proud of that, that they know we care and we'll be there
for them, even if we yell sometimes.
"Three years ago, I finally bought a house here. I love
Dallas and the atmosphere I'm working in. That's important to
me, and money will never be my motivation for leaving.
"I feel we've come a long way from a point 15 years ago
where no one knew we had a program here. But we still have a big
challenge ahead of us, and that's always been my motivation.
"I love a challenge."
----
Distributed The Associated Press
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