By Khalida Sarwari
In February, the Saratoga National Junior Basketball varsity squad won the league championship, a feat that likely didn’t come as a surprise for a team that won its second consecutive title and has had only one regular season loss over the past two years.
What did surprise some, though, is that the 2014-15 squad was helmed by a female volunteer who became the team’s winning head coach despite the odds she faced throughout the season.
Lily Asia stepped into the role last summer, initially helping to draft practice schedules and oversee other minor tasks, but it wasn’t long before she was promoted to head coach, a responsibility she said she welcomed because she was familiar with the rules of the game and had even played a little bit herself in high school. It helped also that her son, Christopher, a fourth-grader at Argonaut Elementary School, played on the team, along with nine other boys in the third and fourth grades enrolled in the Saratoga and Campbell school districts.
As Asia settled into her new role, she quickly realized the other coaches–all men–weren’t too pleased to have a female coach in the league. In fact, she said, with the exception of one, her male counterparts wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence.
“The other coaches, they never looked at me straight to my eyes; they just turned their face around like I’m nothing,” said Asia, a Saratoga resident who is of Indonesian descent and works as a consultant for Apple. “They don’t really recognize me as much. Basically I never exist.”
Determined not to let their judgment deter her, Asia turned her focus to her team, mandating a twice-weekly practice routine, even though the league requires only one day of practice per week, to prepare them for another winning season. That was the easy part. Despite her work ethic, Asia still wasn’t being acknowledged by the other coaches, and in the beginning, even by her students and their parents.
Feeling “sad and rejected,” Asia said she considered quitting many times.
“I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ ” she said. “The insult, the humiliation is just like to the point [where] it’s so not worth it, but then again I will embarrass my son, I will embarrass the females; the next time a female coach steps up they’re going to say, ‘You’re going to fail, too, because the last one quit.’ “
While she was hurt by their rejection, she didn’t complain when the coaches were asked to fill out evaluation reports for their players and the league posted everyone’s but hers. She also didn’t complain when her name was left out yet again on the practice schedule, although included were the names of even the assistant coaches and volunteers. Or the other times her name was replaced by her assistant coaches’ names, and once, she was even asked to give her husband’s name instead. Or the three different photographers–including one female–who asked her if she was sure she wanted to be in the picture when they came by to take photos of her team.
Instead, Asia said she used these incidents to fuel her ambition to prove to the male coaches that she was just as good as them, if not better.
“It made me stronger. It made me want to prove to them, ‘Hey, I do exist whether you like it or not,’ ” said Asia.
So when her team won the championship on Valentine’s Day, Asia was more relieved than elated. She said for her, it was an accomplishment of what she’d set out to do, and the reason that she didn’t quit every time she had faced adversity for coaching an all-boys team as a woman: It demonstrated that women can win championships and can compete against men, she said.
In fact, she said her experience has taught her there are unique qualities that a female coach can bring to her team that is sometimes lacking in male coaches, one of them being fairness.
“Being a female, we are more sensitive to children and we are more loving and caring,” she said. “I pay attention to every single player on my team. One player was on my team, a second-grader who was tall. We helped him so much to the point where he has become very good, so at the end of the [season] he became one of the good players, one of the aggressive players. All the players improved.”
Asia said she hasn’t yet decided if she’ll return when the new season starts in November, not because she’s backing away from the challenges of the job, but because she doesn’t know if she can commit the time. Either way, she hopes her story will serve as a wake-up call to both men and women in sports, and especially young women who may be interested in coaching but are intimidated.
“I definitely encourage all moms to step up and do not be afraid facing the big boys,” she said. “Step up and show them what a female can do.”