Former college star turns assistant coach
From Michigan to Portugal to Washington to Tucson, and from cop to professional basketball player to assistant coach, first-year UA women's assistant coach Yeshimbra "Shimmy" Gray has been there and done that.
That's precisely why head coach Joan Bonvicini wanted Gray on her women's basketball staff.
"I wanted to bring the absolute best person," Bonvicini said. "Having been a former player and a police officer, she had a lot of different leadership qualities that were beneficial to our program. I thought she would be able to relate to a lot of different people."
Shimmy Gray grew up the youngest of four children in Flint, Mich., starring in basketball and track and field at Carman-Ainsworth High School. She was better at track than basketball, she said, but whenever the track recruiters came, she would run and hide. Her dream was college basketball ÷ at Southern California, Louisiana Tech, Long Beach State or Tennessee, the four schools that, in her mind, were the consistently best programs in the country.
Coincidentally, the reason Long Beach State was such a powerhouse at the time was because Bonvicini was head coach there before she came to the UA.
"I wanted to play for (Bonvicini) when I was little," Gray said. "I had a poster of Coach B in my locker when I was in seventh grade. That's why I am here ÷ because of her."
Gray was not recruited by any of her four dream schools, but she was recruited by her hometown school, Michigan. After redshirting her first year because of a knee injury, Gray was a three-year starter and went on to be captain her senior year. She left her mark in the Michigan record books ÷ sixth all-time in steals, 11th in rebounding average and 15th in rebounds.
"What you see of me on the sideline is what you saw of me on the court: very emotional and intense. Every play was a big play to me," Gray said.
Gray graduated from Michigan in 1994 with a major in sociology and a minor in law, criminology and deviance. Doing what she thought was the job she wanted, Gray went into the police force straight out of college.
After four years of working in a rough area of Michigan, and with the help of friends and family, Gray decided that police work wasn't for her.
"It wasn't what I thought it was," she said. "I thought it was going to be Îserve and protect,' give stickers to little kids, drive around and everyone's smiling at you. But kids are throwing rocks at your car and everybody hates you. I think I was just immature for the job."
Gray decided she missed basketball, so after getting back in shape ("I had a lot of doughnut weight to lose," she said), she toured for a short time with Athletes in Action to get some exposure, and got a gig playing professional basketball for Olivais Futbol Clube in the First Division Women's League in Coimbra, Portugal.
"It was awesome. It was the best job ever," Gray said.
Because of her nagging knee injury, Gray played in Portugal for just the 1998-1999 season before heading back to the United States, where she got a job as an assistant coach at Bellevue Community College in Washington.
After one season at Bellevue, she became an assistant at Washington from 2000-2003, where she coached the post players, helped with scouting and helped run the scout team.
Then came an opening at the UA, when longtime associate head coach Denise Dove Ianello joined the staff at Wisconsin ÷ and Gray put in for the job.
"She's a future Hall of Famer," Gray said of Bonvicini. "I mean, if she wants you to come and learn from her and be a part of her staff, you would be stupid not to."
Gray spends most of her time recruiting or coaching the UA guards.
"I'm single, but I am married to this job," Gray joked.
The best part of her job, Gray says, is the players.
"Seeing them grow and seeing them change and become women· Sometimes I think we forget that that's why we do this in the first place," Gray said. "I mean, you want to win ÷ obviously, you want to win every game you play and be successful ÷ but ultimately you are a coach because you want to work with kids."
"She has her patience and takes her time with you," said freshman guard Linda Pace. "She makes sure you get the little things right. As far as the team goes, she's out there on the court playing with us, competing."
When talking about Gray, the words "fire," "energy," and "intensity" come up frequently.
"She brings a lot of intensity to our team, especially when she has the pregame speech," Pace said. "She has so much fire built up into her, so she gets us all pumped up and ready to play."
Bonvicini said she likes Gray not only for her intensity in the games, but for her honesty.
"She has a great deal of integrity," Bonvicini said. "With the players, she is someone they respect. She is going to tell you the truth. She isn't going to just pat you on the back. They really respect her for that."
Gray said her goal is to be head coach one day, preferably in the Pacific 10 Conference. But that is "long way off" for her at this point, she says. Right now, she is enjoying her coaching job, and with what little free time she has, watching lots of movies and spending time with her dog Flint, a pit bull-boxer mix.
One of her short-term goals, however, is to have her players remember one important thing.
"I cared for them," Gray said. "That I really didn't care about them as a player as much as I cared about them as a person. That I treated them the same whether they were a starter or a reserve, whether they scored 20 points a game or two points a game ÷ and that I was fair."