’87 Vallejo basketball girls team honored

Ayres helped turn around struggling program

Prior to the 1985-86 season, the Vallejo High School girls basketball team was a doormat in the Monticello Empire League.

Head coach Debbie Ayres decided to take a little different approach with the program.

“Through discipline, hard work and attending camps and college games, they turned it around,” Ayres recalled. “They practiced hard and really re-invested time in the community.”

Long before the term “worst to first” was used, the Apaches not only became competitive. They became champs. Vallejo won the Monticello Empire League in 1986, 1987 and 1988.

The 1987 team will be inducted into the Vallejo Sports Hall of Fame on Saturday at the Dan Foley Cultural Center.

Forward Tricia Allen, 50, is a Dallas Police Officer now and was a forward/center on those teams. Allen eventually received a women’s golf scholarship for TCU but she remembers her basketball days fondly.

“I remember we got into a groove early in the year,” Allen said. “Jennifer Beckmire was our anchor. She was our guard and she was unbelievable. We had a lot of height too. We were born out of rawness. We weren’t that fast when we started out, but from that first practice our coaches told us that we were going to be a running team. We wore our opponents out going up and down the floor.”

Beckmire eventually earned a women’s basketball scholarship at Cal State Fullerton.

Ayres mentioned that the 3-point shot came into existence in the 1980’s and she immediately found a guard — Sue Young — who could shoot those long balls with efficiency.

“I used to report in to the Vallejo Times-Herald that Sue shot the 3 at an 80 percent clip and they didn’t believe me,” Ayres

said. “For her, the further out, the better she shot the ball.”

Ayres said she is saddened that Kim Carter passed away a few years ago and won’t get to join her former teammates at the ceremony.

“She was the engine that made the team go,” Ayres said. “Everyone loved Kim. She would run through a wall. At Bottari Gym they used to keep these storage boxes on the side of the gym and Kim literally ran right into them diving for a loose ball one time. … We were all really sad to lose her, but her family members will be there (at the ceremony) in her place.”

Carter went on to play at College of the Siskiyous and then Sonoma State.

Ayres, a Vallejo Sports Hall of Famer herself, recalls some of the biggest games being against teams like Vacaville, Armijo and Vintage. For Allen, the biggest games were always against Hogan.

“That was the game we wanted to win,” she said. “I do recall the Napa teams and Vacaville teams being good, but we were chomping at the bit to play Hogan.”

Ayres had her team play

stifling man-to-man defense, much like the ones engineered by Bobby Knight at Indiana and Pat Summitt at Tennessee. Ayres eventually became an assistant coach under Summitt when she became a college coach.

Ayres recalled that times were different then and the girls basketball team initially wasn’t allowed into Bottari Gym until game time.

“We practiced in the girls gym and we had to go in and sweep the floor,” she recalled. “The gym was used for P.E. and there was a volleyball net in there and just one basket for us to practice. I don’t think I made too many friends there but I told the administrators that we deserved equal time. At first, they allowed us to share it maybe two or three days before we finally shared the gym equally.”

Forward Michelle Toney, who now lives in Hayward, attended Solano College and received her bachelor’s degree from San Jose State, recalls a diverse group of players on the team. Toney referred to herself as one of the “nerds” on the squad. Toney said one of the things she recalled was having a good group of fans come out to the games once the team started winning.

“We had students, teachers

and other faculty there and even had other teams come and scout us,” she recalled. “It was kind of exciting because the boys had a really strong following since they were phenomenal back then. I think we became better than the boys, which they didn’t really like but they came to our games too.”

One of the parents suggested that Ayres buy a video camera to watch their games and she eventually did that. Ayres said that was the first time the girls basketball program was able to watch VHS tapes and try to improve on their play.

One of the things that Ayres is most proud of is the amount of players who went on to go to college. Many of the players earned scholarships in other sports and others just concentrated on school and received their degrees.

And for Ayres, all three seasons were special in their own way.

“The first year was incredible since we went all the way from last place to first place,” she said. “To repeat and do it again was great. The third year we were a little less talented but the group of players really knew how to win.”