No Question That He’s on Trakh

There shouldn’t be any need to ask The Question to Pepperdine women’s basketball Coach Mark Trakh anymore.

Not after his Waves knocked off fifth-ranked Florida at Firestone Fieldhouse on Saturday.

Afterword, Trakh and his players gathered around a television set in the locker room, turned to CNN Headline News and waited for their score to show up on the sports ticker. When it did, the team let out a rousing cheer that spilled out of the room, down the hall and into the lobby of the fieldhouse.

For all of his victories as coach of the girls’ team at Brea Olinda, do you think any of them ever made the sports ticker? Uh-uh.

Why did he leave Brea Olinda, where he won almost 90% of his games and four state championships in 13 years? Now you know. There’s nothing like the thrill of taking on and beating the best that’s out there.

“You’ve got to try,” Trakh said after he went through a gantlet of congratulatory handshakes and hugs on the way back to his office. “If I fail here, at least I’ve tried.”

He’s in his fifth season at Pepperdine. He’s managed to win more games than he’s lost (57-55), but he hasn’t managed to shake his identity as The Guy Who Left Brea Olinda. With a road game at Cal State Fullerton--as close as he’ll get to Brea--on Tuesday, the reminders of his glory days will be even more vivid.

“It’s nice to see old friends and stuff, but that’s all past,” Trakh said. “It’s past. Pepperdine’s the present.

“There was some success there, and I really don’t like to be associated with it anymore. It bothers me to be associated with it, really. It’s other, new people now. Jeff Sink’s the coach, he’s doing a great job.

“When I was there we just had better players than everybody, I don’t know how much coaching was involved.”

Sure, talent wins. Don’t think that Trakh didn’t have anything to do with attracting talent.

As an eighth-grader, Jennifer Saari’s family moved from Barstow to Brea so she could play for Trakh. Then he left, leaving Saari to ask The Question.

“I was like, ‘How could you leave a program that you built up like that?’ ” Saari said.

“He just said, ‘Well, I’ve got to move on. I’ve got to take the next step.’ ”

Four years later, Saari got her chance to play for Trakh. She’s a freshman at Pepperdine, a freshman who was on the court for a lengthy and critical stretch of the game against Florida on Saturday.

With young players like her, plus transfers and strong recruiting, Trakh thinks he’s on the way to better things at Pepperdine.

“This is only one game,” Trakh said. “We’ve got a lot to do here, but I think we’re headed in the right direction.

“We’re building it. We’re getting a crowd. It’s been a slow process, but I think we’re doing it the right way.”

He says that “we want to be an alternative to USC and UCLA,” which must be a little strange after being the only choice, really, for high school basketball.

“Brea wasn’t the choice in 1980,” Trakh said. “By 1985, Brea was the choice.

“We win some games, hopefully we will be the choice.”

Trakh was on a high Saturday, the type of euphoria you just can’t get in an Orange League game.

“I haven’t felt this since Nicole Erickson hit the shot in 1993 to win the state championship,” Trakh said. “It’s awesome.”

The lows have come with much greater frequency at Pepperdine than at Brea Olinda. His 55 losses here are 13 more than he suffered his entire 13 years there. He never lost more than two games in a season during his last six years at Brea Olinda.

It must have been tempting to stick with what worked. Sometimes people find their niche and it becomes impossible to imagine them doing anything else. Excel long enough and you can become a legend even while performing on a smaller stage, like Eddie Robinson at Grambling.

After taking the Pepperdine job, Trakh wavered and rescinded. Then he realized if he did that he would never get another college offer. He had to leave.

At Pepperdine, Trakh is just another coach. And while there might be a greater upside, there’s also less tolerance for failure.

“And you’re working without a safety net,” Trakh said. “Because if you get fired, there’s no teaching jobs. That’s why it was so hard to leave, because you’re working without a safety net.”

More than once he’s had visions of getting fired and heading back to Brea to take the junior varsity coaching position he held 18 years ago.

But now he’ll be coming to Cal State Fullerton on the best possible terms.

“It’s fun going back to Orange County knowing we just beat Florida,” Trakh said.

His future’s looking brighter. And Brea Olinda is receding further and further into the past.