Laura Mitchell Wilde: from coaching UCSC to NBA
3/28/2021 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Laura Mitchell-Wilde's wild journey in life has taken her literally and figuratively all over.
From Santa Cruz and coaching, to Law School, and eventually the NBA, she has been able to follow her passion and develop lives on and off the court.
Mitchell-Wilde, a pro sports Mental Performance Coach, coached five seasons for the Banana Slugs over two separate stints almost 20 years ago. She left UCSC originally for a couple years after conflict with the former Athletic Director.
"I left because the athletic director didn't like my style, which is funny because my style got me into the NBA" she said.
The A.D. stepped in as women's coach, and when he left for another D-III job and the new coach didn't fit and was let go, Mitchell-Wilde inquired to Dan Wood, head of Physical Education and Athletics, about her old job.
"Dan goes 'All right. I'll tell the new A.D. about it,'" she recalled. "The new A.D. and I talked on the phone for 10 minutes and he goes 'You're our next coach.' "
"When I came back in 2001, it was much more settled. My first year coaching in '96, I told the players we had practice like Monday through Saturday and they all fell over."
When Mitchell-Wilde first got the UCSC head coaching job in the summer of 1996 at age 24, she had to change the whole culture of the program.
"I was an extremely competitive player, I held the NCAA record for rebounds," recalled Mitchell-Wilde. "So they realized that I was a real basketball player when I used to play with them, because we only had nine people. I ran the point guard in practice to try and show a point guard how to run. I would say when Brianne Faria was a freshman, I felt like we were really starting to get somewhere.
"Back then, players drove one of the vans to games. Brianne was always the other driver besides me."
Coming from Texas, Mitchell-Wilde said she was considered really Liberal there, but was considered Conservative when she came to Santa Cruz.
"There was no plan for diversity in Texas. I get to Santa Cruz and everyone's included, everyone's invited, LGBTQ places, women's power. I mean, it was just incredible. It was such an eye-opening experience."
Earning just $6,000 a year when hired, she lived at Cowell College with her son and had a meal plan before adding more jobs, including Senior Woman Administrator and Sports Information Director. The limited program budget meant players had to buy their own shoes and Mitchell-Wilde paid for the uniforms.
In between her coaching stints, she still worked for UCSC as a recruiting coordinator.
"J. Michael Thompson was in the admissions department. He said 'Look, you've been convincing people to come here just to play on the basketball team. We want to hire you for academic and diversity outreach'. So he hired me. I would make almost $40,000 a year, double my pay. All I had to do is drive to a high school and give talks and lectures to the kids, and then Monterey High School hired me as the head basketball coach.
"What's interesting is that no one had ever done the recruiting here, so I wasn't really sure how to recruit at a huge D3 school because I came from University of Dallas, a very small, close-knit Catholic school," she said. "But at Santa Cruz I learned quickly to recruit in-state, not even worry about out of state at all. At one point, we got a girl from Oregon (Shane Fisher) that was a state champion. So, what I would do is look for players who were role players on state championship teams, because I realized those kind of kids who come to our program and change everything."
The team made the California-Pacific Conference playoffs in both her two years back at the helm. Faria also pulled off the first triple-double in school history in January 2002, including a school-record 12 steals. Lilia Flores, another of Mitchell-Wilde's players, is the school's all-time career assists leader and second in steals. Rachel Baudler was the first Banana Slug to score over 300 in a season and is still fifth in career points. Other standouts recruited were Starry Sprenkle from Salinas (UCSC's career Field-Goal Percentage leader) and Manhattan Beach's Mischa Plunkett, who broke Flores's school single-season assist record in 2003.
"Starry Sprenkle was just what her name says," Mitchell-Wilde recalls. "A bright and cheerful hardworker – tall girl who was kind and had lots of balance in her life."
"Mischa was a FIERCE point guard who was native American. She moved back to Alaska so her kids can be in a community. Her parents were staples at games. She was a year behind Brianne. They were close."
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| Starry Sprenkle (#35) | Lilia Flores | Brianne Faria |
Mitchell-Wilde said players like Faria and Allison Arnese she considered family.
"I did not want to stay if those two were leaving, because they were part of the family. I'd been with them since freshman year," Mitchell-Wilde said.
2001 Women's Team at pre-season retreat at Lake Pinecrest (courtesy Marcie Haduca)
She eventually left UC Santa Cruz after getting accepted to Pepperdine Law School in 2003. She was an assistant for the Division I Waves for a bit, and then head coach for Malibu High School.
After that, she fell into Mind Body medicine, adapting and using her holistic skills she developed at UC Santa Cruz.
"What I was doing at Santa Cruz was I was having the players visualize. I had them shoot free throws without the basketball, and we would go on this team retreat for a couple nights overnight and create a powerful team mantra. I've been able to take the visualization stuff and help players get in 'the zone' when I work with them."
Her skill was discovered quite by accident, during a UCSC men's volleyball game against UC Santa Barbara at the West Gym. Mitchell-Wilde, the Senior Woman Administrator, was Game Manager when an injury happened.
"A kid twisted his ankle," she recalled. "I was one of the very few women there and it was spring break, deserted on campus. I was just kind of watching from far away, and I went over and I said I'm going to call the ambulance. I remember both coaches said, 'No, we're not going to stop the game. He's fine, we're going to put some ice on it.' I thought 'something else is going on.' So anyway, I called the ambulance and then left, figuring I'm going to get out of here so there's no wrath upon me when the ambulance shows up.
"The next day I get a call from the Chancellor's office, and at the same time I get a call from our trainer. The Chancellor's office said 'we want to offer you this award because you saved someone's life.' I said 'I didn't save anyone's life. You must have the wrong person.' They said 'no, the player that you called an ambulance for had a compound fracture and it hit an artery. He would have bled out and died had you not called the ambulance.' And our trainer, Cara - had no last name, who was this super "out there" guy- said 'Laura, you have a gift. You have to use your gifts.' I really didn't want to talk about it and didn't know if I had a gift.
"So within a year, I left and was going to law school at Pepperdine while working part time as a grad assistant coach. That was where I ran into Mind/Body medicine. I just got sucked into this class one day, and everyone in class said 'oh you had this intuitive gift. You must be a healer.' And it turns out I guess I have that gift for helping people heal. So from there, I spent five years after learning that ,and now I've created Quantum Sports Medicine. I do holistic healing for athletes, but it's also a way of doing Mind/Body mental performance that is not just about talk therapy, but really actually combining things like body ecology, gut health, epigenetics- our body is keeping track of things, and our DNA keeps track of things that help us survive better."
Mitchell-Wilde had worked with the L.A. Clippers, and now takes clients from the whole league. She says one of her jobs is to help players feel great when they're done playing, while transforming them while they still play by rooting out where their pain is. "Dee Brown from the Celtics, he's a client and has become a great mentor. He said 'You know you can get a job at any college in the country after being in the NBA for three seasons' and I was 'Yeah, I never thought about that!
"I don't mind being a pioneer. I work with NBA players and some MLB Pitchers. Pitchers are like point guards. The key is to help that person so they can see success beyond themselves, learning how to command the team as a powerful leader."
