M-A High's girls basketball coach nets 512 victories M-A High's girls basketball coach nets 512 victories (March 06, 2002)

By David Boyce

Almanac Staff Writer

With 512 victories to her name so far, Pam Wimberly, the Menlo-Atherton High School athletic director and girls' basketball coach, knows a thing or two about organizing teenagers into a winning team.

During her 32-year coaching career at M-A, during which she has coached over 700 players, her teams have won 17 league championships, four Central Coast Section titles and have been invited to the Northern California state championships four times.

She was recently honored at M-A for her years of service to the Sequoia Union High School District and her expertise as a coach.

Last year, Coach Wimberly was named girls' basketball coach of the year by the California Coaches Association, which represents 75,000 high school and community college coaches throughout California.

Her coaching method is represented by the familiar acronym KISS, which she translates to Keep It So Simple.

"I don't do a whole bunch of fancy-type stuff that might bog the kids down," she says, adding that some of her players are in honors classes with correspondingly greater amounts of homework.

Coach Wimberly says she prepares her players physically with daily mile runs, stretching exercises, and oft repeated offense and defense drills, with the idea of making it "real easy to grasp and play the game."

She says that virtually all of her players have graduated from high school and that "many, many" have graduated from college. Of those students who do go on to college, she says that many choose not to play basketball because of academic priorities.

But she says she hopes that the experiences of playing the game at M-A will have taught them something about being in a diverse group of people and working together toward a common goal.

Coach Wimberly lives in Palo Alto with her husband Bill and their three children.