Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Winning coach of 41 years let go at Northern California High School

Coach Pam Wimberly won't return as girls basketball coach at Menlo-Atherton High School next year:

Pam Wimberly, the winningest girls basketball coach in Northern California history, has been relieved of her duties at Menlo-Atherton High School.

"It came as a shock; it has kind of hit me hard," Wimberly said. "I was told Thursday afternoon by my principal, Matthew Zito. He gave three reasons: poor communication skills, practices not being effective and that he would like a more modern, fast-paced style of play."

When reached Tuesday, Zito declined to comment, citing district policy.

Wimberly, 65, has coached at Menlo-Atherton for 41 years.

She has a career record of 663-340, ranking third on the state wins list behind Joe Vaughan (761) of Buena High in Ventura and Eleanor Dykstra (665) of Valley Christian-Cerritos.

Menlo-Atherton won 18 league championships and four Central Coast Section titles under Wimberly. She also served as the school's athletic director for 23 years.

6 comments:

Kim said...

Ouch. Guess the experienced coaches with a lot of wins are not in fashion this year

Sue Favor said...

I had the same thought, Kim. If I hadn't already gone on one of my "I've had enough of people" tangents three weeks ago, I'd be going on one now.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to link two articles about Coach Wimberly who deserves a better fate than what she got.

The first is an article that shows all of the support from many of the HS coaches that have coached against her and respect her. including this comment from a former player - “She not only taught you basketball skills, but also life skills. She taught us not only how to be basketball players, but women.”

http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?type=sports&title=Wimberly%20era%20ends%20suddenly&id=235688

The second link is an article from 2002 about Coach Wimberly as she hit her 500th win and how she described girls basketball in the late 60's and early 70's.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/08/PN22976.DTL

IM in OC

Anonymous said...

Wow shocking and thanks for the links OC.

Sue Favor said...

Thanks for the links, IM.

Anonymous said...

This principal Matthew Zito is a racist and has been responsible for ridding the school of teachers of age. This was done deliberate so that Wimberly will retire.