Schuller reflects on past with milestone 500th game at Eastern

Wendy Schuller does not remember her first game as a Division I head coach at Eastern Washington University, but she certainly recalls that first victory.

Having spent 17 years and over 500 games as EWU’s head women’s basketball coach is reason enough to have a slightly blurred memory.

“The reason I remember that was the coach of Hartford was Jen Rizzotti, who was one of the great UConn point guards,” Schuller said. Sure enough, the coach was right. Her Eagles topped the Hawks 67-50 on Nov. 23, 2001 at the Georgia Tech Classic in Atlanta.

Her 500th game, played last Saturday at Reese Court, was also memorable. It concluded with a 58-41 win over Southern Utah, but also was the first time punches, or the threat of them at least, being thrown in a game she coached.

“I thought that the game had gotten a little too physical throughout the course of the second half,” Schuller said of the pushing and shoving that ensued between the T-Bird’s Rebecca Cardenas and Eastern’s Symone Stark.

It’s been a much more peaceful and memorable time in the previous 499 contests where she’s paced the sideline, occasionally throwing her hands up in disgust, or even rolling her eyes.

Schuller was hired away from her associate head coach role at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La. For the tongue-tied and curious, Schuller, who still has a hint of a southern drawl, pronounces that city, “nah-codish.”

She replaced Jocelyn Pfeifer, who struggled to build consistency in her four-season stay between 1997-2001. Schuller has injected consistency into the program, and recently, with the retirement of Montana’s Robin Selvig in 2016, she earned the title as the Big Sky’s longest-serving head coach.

Schuller’s foundation for authoring a competitive and winning program was laid in Louisiana where she served on the staff of James Smith, the most successful coach in Southland Conference history.

Originally from Redlands, Calif., Schuller earned her bachelor’s degree in business in 1992 from Fresno Pacific University and played for that NAIA program. She earned a master’s degree in athletic administration while serving as a graduate assistant at Northwestern State.

While the statistical history might be a bit hazy — Schuller’s crafted a 247-254 overall record and is 142-125 in Big Sky play — her memories of the piece the program has played in the bigger picture of EWU athletics, and the school itself, is quite vivid.

Eastern went through a tumultuous time from 2005-2007 with a revolving door in the athletic director’s office. Five different people sat in that chair and Schuller suggests that was a factor in a string of subpar seasons that are general outliers of the program’s overall success.

In that span, her teams were 24-64 overall and 11-37 in Big Sky play. Since 2009 they have never been out of the postseason in some form or another.

“That has a huge reflection on our recruiting, our morale, our confidence, everything,” Schuller said. “I’ve seen an absolute correlation between departmental success and university success.”

The uptick in court success has come hand-in-hand with what is happening across Washington Street with enrollment and growth of the academic offerings.

“The university has grown and is thriving and is in a really good place,” she said. “Those things have been part of what’s helped us be so successful.”

When considering the time that has passed, “I think of all the kids who aren’t kids anymore and have been a part of the program in lean years and great years,” Schuller said. “That’s the best part about it.”

As country star Luke Bryan reflects in the song “Fast,” his latest offering, “Sixty seconds now feels more like thirty,” and so it seems for Schuller who flipped the pages back to day-one in Cheney when her oldest son, Rory, was about seven months old.

“I remember rolling him down the ramp (at the airport) thinking ‘What are we doing?’” Schuller said of her oldest who is suddenly a junior at Cheney High School.

“He’s grown up with all these awesome sisters,” Schuller said, referring to past players. But he also has a younger brother, Brandon and sister Megan. Husband Mark Schuller is the City Administrator for Cheney.

Does she have another 500 games and 17 years in her? Schuller said with a laugh, “The miracle of 500 is that they keep you for 500.”

But there’s another side to that, too, Schuller said. “I’ve been fortunate because you don’t always want to stay somewhere for that long.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.