Last season, the 49ers made their 23rd consecutive NCAA appearance—in the intervening eight months, they’ve suffered some losses. Three players (Iris Murray, Nicole Vargas, and Quincy Verdin) graduated; another left for a different university (Cat Highmark), and yet another for a different country (the multi-talented Ya Chen Wang, who returned home to China). The group that remains, and who spent a good chunk of the last month running double-days in the Pyramid, has plenty of firepower, with All-American senior Naomi Washington, and first-team All-Big West selections Caitlin Ledoux and Brittney Herzog. The 49ers are also a preseason Top 25 team, ranked at 23rd; they were picked to win the Big West in the conference’s Coaches Poll.
In other words, it’s a complicated picture at the Beach—which is probably why Gimmillaro paints contrasting portraits of this year’s team. In one breath, he says the group he has practicing on the court right now has the potential to be “special.” In the next, he addresses very real concerns about depth. “Losing Ya is a huge problem,” he says. “Depth is the problem. How do you fill in those positions in your depth—what it hurts is the substitutions.”
The lack of bodies breeds a lack of options—”We are going to have to be more intricate, and faster in what we do,” says Gimmillaro. And that means they’ll need educated, well-practiced players, a challenge since 13 of the 17 players on the 49ers’ roster this year are underclassmen (with nine freshman). The answer to that, of course, is more time on the practice court—which creates another contradictory problem. “Oh, I don’t like double-days,” Gimmilarro says. “You have the potential to lose players. And we can’t lose players.”
Everywhere there’s a downside, there’s an upside—Debbie Green, Gimmillaro’s long-time assistant, retired last season. But in Erika Chidester, Matt Ulmer, and new volunteer assistant Gavin Christensen, he has one of the better scrimmage teams of assistant coaches ever assembled. Highmark was slated to be the setter this year, but Gimmillaro’s been very happy with what he’s seen from Ashley Lee, and she should be a more than capable replacement, provided she can stay healthy.
Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—the young squad won’t have very long to figure out its identity. On Friday and Saturday, they open against no. 15 San Diego, and no. 2 Texas (both games are in the Pyramid at 7pm)—that’s two enormous tests for the school’s most storied program and its young blood. Smiling, Gimmillaro says, “We will have to look like we have more depth than we actually do.”
