At least one former Juco player can be found on the rosters of numerous teams around the country, and in many cases it's more than that. Texas Tech has five players on its current roster from Jucos; Pacific University of Stockton, California, has two. Numerous other colleges have similar lineups.
Why the change? Trinity Valley Community College Coach Michael Landers said it has come from the ground up.
"AAU play has blown up and the game has grown," he said. "The WNBA has also been great for exposure."
The result, according to Landers, is that there are more women playing basketball who need a place to play.
Ventura College Coach Ned Mircetic concurs.
"We have the same number of community colleges in California as when I was young, but the population has increased 10-15 million," Mircetic said. "So there are more kids in JCs as the pond gets fuller."
Since 1990s when Juco graduates and now-WNBA stars Betty Lennox, Sheryl Swoopes and Yolanda Griffith paved the way, the quality of play at the junior college level has grown exponentially.
"When I first started coaching, it was always the same four or five teams winning the championships," said Landers, who is in his ninth year at Trinity Valley. "Now every kid we get, we're going against five other schools for."
Likewise, Mircetic said he doesn't have to look for players much anymore.
"Lately they've been finding me," he stated.
On top of that, Landers said he doesn't have to exert as much effort these days to get his players into Division I schools after they graduate.
"D-I schools will come to us towards the end of the season and say, 'Who do you have?'" Landers said.
To be sure, some D-I colleges specifically seek out Juco players, and Pacific Coach Lynne Roberts heads one of those programs. She calls it "a conscious decision," and even has a specific idea of how many freshmen and how many Juco players she wants on her team. Though she laments that she gets less time to work with Juco players, Roberts said the fact that they come in playing at a higher level is worth it.
"Junior college players, in my experience, obviously bring in a little more experience and maturity," Roberts said. "They also bring in a desired attitude that tends to be very focused on basketball and achieving their goals on the court.”
"I have had great experiences with our junior college players."
The rise of Jucos has helped bring parity to the women's game now that there is so much more competition for Division I scholarships. Jucos also give some players an opportunity to get to higher levels of the sport than they would otherwise. In that respect, the role of the Juco hasn't changed.
Jucos: The Great Equalizer
Gulf Coast Community College Coach Roonie Scovel said the young women who come into her program have one or more of a myriad of issues that have kept them from going to a four-year college. Some may have family responsibilities that have led them to stay close to home, others may have a learning disability or general academic difficulties, still others a perceived physical disadvantage such as lack of height. But Scovel said most seem to need one thing in particular to continue their education and their basketball careers: Self-confidence.
"Some kids are here because they need a second chance, and some are here because they need to gain confidence and believe in themselves," said Scovel, who is coaching her 13th season at the college, in Panama City.
She said her players tend to come into the program as good athletes, and that their athleticism isn't the problem. But through the lessons on the basketball court and her pushing them in their academics, their self-esteem grows.
"It's a constant battle for us to get them to believe in themselves," Scovel said of herself and her coaching staff. "It's hard to live it, and it's hard to fight that fight. But on a daily basis, the highs outweigh the lows."
Landers sees the same things at Trinity Valley. He said that every one of his athletes is there for a reason, whether they didn't have a high enough test score, didn't have a good GPA or didn't put in the time developing their game.
"Initially, when they get here, they're upset because they feel like they missed out on their chance," Landers said. "Many are so far removed from home and don't know what it takes to be successful in college.”
"At first they don't think they can make it, because often they're the first ones in their families to go to college,” he continued. “But then they realize that if they buckle down and work, they can reach their goals."
Landers, a former Division II coach, also said he finds coaching at a junior college rewarding.
"You get to watch kids grow and develop," he said.
Andrea Martre, coach at Southwest Tennessee Community College, said she is "100 percent sure" that she and her staff work harder to help their athletes than many coaches in higher-level schools.
"Why? Because kids really need this," she said. "A lot of kids are needy, and every day is a different challenge, but a sense of humor helps."
The efforts of all three coaches have built each of them solid programs that produce top-notch athletes. Scovel has turned out nine National Junior College Athletic Association First-Team All-Americans during her tenure; Landers has produced three, including Shannon Bobbitt, who went on to lead two National Championship teams at the University of Tennessee; Martre's program has yielded three, and last year four of her players went on to DI schools.
"When they leave here after two years, they are so much more confident and prepared," Landers said.
"The people that survive this usually do pretty well."
One thing Juco athletes discover right away is that schools differ, but coaches are basically the same whatever the level of basketball. Well -- the good ones are.
Dave Stricklen, head women's basketball coach at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, is one of those good ones. Going into his 22nd season this fall, he had amassed a 586-112 record that includes 12 regional championships and two Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges (NAACC) Championships. He is known for his intense practices, something newcomers are quick to learn.
"Practice is so hard – oh, my goodness!" said Umpqua freshman Mykiea Russell, a member of the Los Angeles All-City high school girl's basketball First Team in both 2007 and 2008. "The first practice he told us we were going to go as hard as Tennessee.”
"He wants 100 percent the whole three hours, and nothing less. Even if you mess up, you have to mess up going hard."
Scovel runs a similarly tight ship at Gulf Coast, which she guided to the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) National Championship in 2003, and to the runner-up position the following year. Scovel readily admits that she and her coaching staff are "blunt and to the point," and that players "must have thick skin to play for us.”
"Practices are very structured, very intense, because we love to play an athletic, up-tempo style of basketball," Scovel said. "Every year there are one or two players who don't make it in the program.”
"The people that survive this usually do pretty well."
Mircetic, who entered his 19th season at Ventura this year with a 530-84 record that includes five state championships, says he's known as "a yeller," and for his hard-driving style. He emphasizes internal discipline and hard work every day of practice.
"People know me. Parents have grown up with me," Mircetic said. "There's nothing I can tell them about myself that they don't already know."
The coaches maintain that they push the athletes for their own good. Landers said one of his best examples of that philosophy was seen in the case of Bobbitt.
"When she came to us, she was not ready to play at Tennessee, but she had definite goals in mind," Landers said. "We stayed on her, she lived in the gym for two years, and then she was ready."
Landers, Stricklin and Mircetic all said that their goal every year is the same: To win a title.
But just as much as the coaches drive their athletes on the basketball court, they also demand academic progress and good study habits from them. Martre said she pushes class work and good grades more than basketball.
"Academics is the emphasis, because at the end of their lives, they will be doing something else besides playing basketball," Martre said.
Mircetic takes such pride in Ventura's academic rigor that he has a "teacher's night" towards the end of every season, where each player invites and then honors their favorite teacher during a halftime ceremony.
Scovel is proud of the program she's built from scratch, but she's even more proud of one statistic.
"Eighty-four percent of our players have gone on to complete four-year degrees," she said.
Lennox, a 1998 Trinity Valley graduate who graduated from Louisiana Tech University and until her recent off-season waiver on February 3, played for the WNBA's Atlanta Dream where she averaged 17.5 points per game last season, said the rigor of her Juco helped her later in life.
"TVCC taught me how to balance going to class and playing basketball, which lead to me being more prepared to balance life and basketball as a professional player," Lennox stated.
Less glitter, but still gold
Depending upon where an athlete is from, she may go through an adjustment period when first arriving at her chosen junior college, as many of the most successful schools are located in smaller cities.
For Russell, who hails from South Central Los Angeles, coming to Roseburg was a completely different world compared to what she was used to. For one thing, Roseburg's population is only about 20,000, which is much smaller than most of the suburbs of LA. Secondly, Roseburg is over 93 percent white, and Russell, an African-American, is from an area that is virtually entirely Black and Hispanic.
"People are nice here, but I've had to answer questions, a lot of questions," Russell said.
She also called Roseburg "the most boring place on Earth" – a reaction that Juco coaches frequently encounter.
When asked what his player's daily schedule is like in tiny Athens, Texas, Landers said with a laugh, "They play basketball and they study.”
"It's an adjustment for some kids -- a little bit of a culture shock," he said. "But they're forced to focus on academics."
Stricklin said he told Russell when recruiting her that "Roseburg is not a party house," and that "if you're looking for a wild atmosphere, this isn't the place." Russell obviously adjusted, because she posted a 4.0 grade point average at the end of her first term at Umpqua, which ended just before winter break.
"It's boring, but on the other hand, I don't have to worry about what I'm wearing, and there are no distractions," Russell said.
Another less than glamorous aspect of being part of a Juco basketball team is the transportation. For high-profile programs like Tennessee, the team has its own chartered plane. Most DI schools take commercial flights when they're on road trips, but Jucos? They drive the van. In fact, long drives are part of the game plan.
Just before the Christmas holiday, the Los Angeles Southwest College women drove north to Sacramento, California, for a tournament in their team van—a round trip of nearly 800 miles. Stricklin's Umpqua squad drives all over Oregon and Washington, and on one mid-December trip to Seattle, a snow storm hit. What should have been a five-hour drive turned into 10 hours.
"It was pretty long, pretty tedious," said Stricklin, who does the driving.
But for all the down sides, there are a couple huge upsides, one of which is that Juco college coaches aren't bound by the strict rules and codes of NCAA coaches. This allows closer relationships to develop in some cases.
When Russell came to Umpqua last September, for example, school hadn't yet begun, and she had nowhere to stay. Stricklin housed her for three weeks in the guest room of his home with his wife (assistant coach Linda) and family. Russell ended up becoming buddies with his teenage children.
Last summer, when the LA Sparks came to Houston to play the Comets, Landers and his wife made the drive from Athens to watch Bobbitt play for the Sparks. They got to talk a bit afterwards.
Mircetic calls his coaching position "the best job in California," and said he likes it when his ex-players get into coaching because "it keeps us closer.”
"I talk to Hang all the time," Mircetic said of ex-Pirate Monica Hang, now the head coach at Glendale Community College. He then named a handful of his other ex-players-turned-coaches that he communicates with regularly.,P.
The second golden perk of being a Juco player is, of course, the fan adoration. Simply put, small-town Juco teams tend to have larger fan bases than many schools in larger cities.
"We're the only college program in the area, so people have a lot of Umpqua CC paraphernalia in their homes," Stricklin said. "Our fans think we're UConn or Tennessee, and young girls always want the players’ autographs."
Landers said his program gets a lot of support from the Trinity Valley Community College administration, and that Athens residents approach his players in public often to offer compliments or seek an autograph.
"We get a great amount of community support," Landers said. "Our program is a big deal in this town, and a lot of people come to our games."
Breaking down Juco divisions
The NJCAA is comprised of 45 of the 48 contiguous states, and it includes three divisions. Within each division, schools are further divided into geographic regions and districts. Each region has a championship, the winners of which go on to play in the division and national championships.
Mark King, sports information director for NJCAA, said Division I Jucos can offer full scholarships that include room and board; Division II institutions can only offer tuition; and Division III schools are total non-scholarship institutions.
California has its own Juco organization, the California Community College Athletic Association, which includes 12 conferences of teams based on region. Mircetic said the designation was made that way because California is such a large state and has so many Jucos. California Jucos play for a state championship.
Junior colleges are a distinct United States invention, evolving in the 1880's and 1890's during the industrial era, and enjoying increasing popularity in the early 20th Century, during the time of education reforms. Athletics became a part of junior colleges in the 1960s and 1970s.
Like their NCAA counterparts, Juco basketball teams have been playing many tournaments and non-conference games in the early part of the season. At the start of the new year, the majority of Juco teams begin conference play.
The most recent national Juco poll ranks the following schools in the Top 10:
1. Jefferson College, Hillsboro, MO (27-0)
2. Central Arizona College, Coolidge, AZ (25-0)
3. Midland College, Midland, TX (28-0)BR>
4. Walters State Community College, Morristown, TN (24-0)BR>
5. Chipola College, Marianna, FL (22-4)
6. Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City, FL (24-2)
7. University of Arkansas-Fort Smith, Fort Smith, AR (24-2)
8. Connors State College, Warner, OK (23-2)
9. Northeastern Junior College, Sterling, CO (22-1)
10. Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Wesson, MS (20-2)
This year’s Division I Women’s Junior College National Championship Tournament, featuring the top 16 teams from across the nation, will be held in Salina, Kansas, beginning on March 16 and concluding with the championship game at 7 p.m. on March 21.