SEATTLE — It is sure to be an afternoon of mixed emotions for June Daugherty when she returns to Hec Edmundson Pavilion for the first time in almost a year.
Daugherty, who spent 11 years as the head coach at Washington, will coach a game in her old home for the first time since she was fired last March, this time on Washington State’s sideline.
And in her first year at Washington State, Daugherty is enjoying a rough season as much as she can while feeling thankful for a second chance.
Of course the opportunity she is most thankful for is the second chance at life, not coaching in the Pac-10. Not long after the Cougars made Daugherty their choice to revive a struggling program, life took a dramatic turn for the 51-year-old coach. As she arrived at an Everett medical clinic, Daugherty went into sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed in the front seat of her Jeep.
A few fortunate circumstances are the reason Daugherty survived and is close to fully recovered. Had she driven to the clinic alone, Daugherty probably would have died in her car, but her 13-year-old daughter, Breanne, happened to be home sick from school and asked her mom to let her tag along on the trip.
“My good friend was supposed to go with me that day, but she had something come up, and Breanne ended up being sick,” said Daugherty, who was a Mukilteo resident at the time. “I kind of argued with her about whether she should stay home and get well and not go with mom to a routine check up. Like most teenagers, she ended up winning the battle, but I’m fortunate she did go with me that day. She’s the one that went and ran for help and thank goodness she did and responded in the right way.”
The fact that her cardiac arrest occurred at a medical clinic meant doctors were able to start CPR immediately. The doctors shocked Daugherty once with a defibrillator before Everett firefighters arrived, but she was unresponsive.
Brian Zelmer, the division chief of emergency medical services, said that Daugherty had no pulse.
“We shocked her six more times,” Zelmer said. “The guys didn’t think they were going to get her back. Shocking somebody that many times with no conversion, it doesn’t look good. Six blocks from hospital, we got rhythm. … If you shock someone continuously and there’s no conversion to a palpable pulse, chances are you’re going to shock the electric activity out of the heart.”
Daugherty was in the hospital for a week, and now has a defibrillator implanted in her chest. It’s there to speed her heart up if it’s going to slow, or slow it down if it goes to fast. She said full recovery is usually about one year, and that she is at “90 or 95 percent” right now.
“I’m just really appreciative of the second opportunity that I’ve been given,” said Daugherty. “I never had a chance to thank those firefighters personally … Hopefully I can thank them all in person someday. I just really appreciate what they did.”
The transition to life in Pullman has been a good one for Daugherty, her husband/assistant coach Mike, and twins Breanne and Doc.
“The community has just really opened up its arms and embraced us,” she said. “Anytime you’re in transition it’s always tough, especially when you have two 13-year-old junior high kids. People have made us feel more than welcome and very, very comfortable here. We found out it’s a small town that’s just full of great people.”
Daugherty isn’t sure what to expect when she walks back onto the court at Hec Ed, but she at least got some of the emotional aspect of playing the Huskies out of the way when Washington came to Pullman in January.
Still, she knows being back in Seattle will be different. On the bench she called home for more than a decade, a roster full of players she recruited will suddenly be the enemy. Making sure she and her team are the focus will be a challenge.
“I really don’t know what to expect,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to coming over to Seattle. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people and it will be fun to see everybody and visit a little bit and thank a lot of the staff there that I had the opportunity to work with for 11 years. But at the same time, my biggest focus is on having our team prepared for the big Apple Cup game and I’m looking forward to that as well on Sunday … Absolutely, I’m looking forward to it. I have millions of great memories in Hec Ed, and it will be fun to get back in the arena and see the people and the former players. It’s going to be fun to see a lot of familiar faces.”
One of those familiar faces will be that of former Husky and Arlington High School standout Kayla Burt, who played for Daugherty from 2001 to 2006. She is now in her first year as an assistant at the University of Portland.
Through a highly unlikely coincidence, the former player will forever share a bond with her college coach. Like Daugherty, Burt suffered sudden cardiac arrest and nearly died, and like Daugherty, Burt had a defibrillator implanted in her chest. Now, the longtime coach looks to one of her athletes for advice.
“She’s my hero,” Daugherty said. “She’s a great mentor for me. She barely left the hospital the seven days that I was there in Everett. I call her all the time, she’s on my speed dial. I ask her some of the dumbest questions in the world about having a defibrillator in your chest. Just all the things that you go through when you have gone through sudden cardiac arrest and going through the trials and tribulations, she’s been phenomenal, she checks in often with me. She’s been a great resource and a great friend, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.”
Coincidentally, Washington State opened its season with Portland, allowing Burt to catch up with her former coach in person. Burt called the game a surreal moment, but was thrilled to see the progress Daugherty had made. Burt also noticed some changes in Daugherty.
“I never doubted that she would be back coaching,” Burt said. “Just to see her in her element and to see how positive she was with her players, it was great. She was always really positive when I played for her, but I think ever since this happened to her, I think it’s really changed her view of coaching and how to deal with a team that’s kind of struggling a little bit. Her perspective on life, just her positive outlook and everything is in the end going to be beneficial to her players. I think they’re really fortunate to have her over there.”
And just as Daugherty will be experiencing mixed emotions today, so too will her former players who face the task of trying to beat the woman who brought them to Washington. The Huskies managed to do just that the last time the teams played, but while they were enjoying a win at Washington State, they were also happy to see their former coach out of the hospital and back on the sideline.
“It seems like she’s recovered amazingly,” said Washington senior Emily Florence. “That was a scary experience for all of us last year. Just to see her doing so well made me really happy.”
The Huskies got a lot of the emotion out of the way seeing Daugherty last month, but facing Daugherty still won’t be easy.
“I think it’ll be easier now that we have seen her and played against her already, but it’s still going to be an interesting experience having her in this gym on the opposite bench,” said sophomore guard Sami Whitcomb, who like the rest of her teammates made a few trips to Everett when Daugherty was hospitalized. “It was really hard at the time to see her like that. She’s someone that we all really look up to, to see her like that was really hard for all of us, but we all knew she would come back that much stronger. It’s great to see her back out there doing what she loves to do.”
Whitcomb said that it was tough in the last meeting “to have the right mindset that this is a game you want to win, that it’s a battle. Whoever it is that you’re facing, you can’t put a face to them. I think that was probably the hardest thing trying to not put a face to them. It’s just another team you want to beat.”
It’s been less than a year since Daugherty last coached at Hec Ed, but so much has changed since her last game in Seattle. Turning around a struggling program at WSU hasn’t been easy, and will take some time, but fortunately for the Cougars, Daugherty already knows a thing or two about beating long odds.
Contact Herald Writer John Boyle at jboyle@heraldnet.com. For more on University of Washington sports, check out the Huskies blog at heraldnet.com/huskiesblog
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