SEATTLE
Do not play cards with her.
“I will beat you at anything,” Rachel Strand said without a jot of jest in her voice. “I have yet to lose at ‘California Speed.’”
It’s a card game members of the Seattle Pacific University women’s basketball team play when they’re sitting around in airports waiting for their flights to take off.
Strand is fiercely competitive, whatever sport or game she’s engaged in. Her father can attest to this.
“We have this game called ‘Suicide Solitaire,’” Roger Strand, a nurse anesthetist at the Everett Clinic, said. “You’ll have bruises by the time you’re done, either from Rachel or her mom.”
Love taps, with an emphasis on the tap.
Rachel brought that same zeal to the basketball court for the past three years at SPU and for three years before that as a member of the girls’ varsity team at King’s High School.
Do not play cards with her? Do not play basketball against her, either. Her team usually wins.
In high school, she led King’s to records of 25-2, 24-3 and 23-5, plus fourth-, second- and third-place finishes in the state tournament. In her first three years at SPU, she played on teams that went 30-1 (NCAA Division II quarterfinalist), 30-3 (NCAA runner-up) and 24-6 (NCAA third round).
Strand and winning go hand in hand. “She understands what it’s all about,” Falcons coach Julie van Beek said.
What it’s all been about for Strand is total dedication to the SPU program, making the most of a backup role in her first three seasons as a Falcon, striving mightily to give her best every day both on and off the court despite some painful hip problems, and embracing a leadership role as a starter on this year’s team.
And, lest we forget, she is a bit of a competitor. “Losing,” Strand said, “leaves a bitter, bitter taste in my mouth.”
The taste she’s known has largely been sweet as chocolate.
This season the Falcons notched their 20th straight winning record. The Falcons’ season ended with a 75-60 loss to Chico State in the NCAA Division II Regional semifinal March 10 at UC-San Diego.
Strand, a 6-foot forward, came to SPU knowing she would get a quality education and be part of a rich basketball tradition. “She wanted that tradition to continue,” van Beek said.
And continue it has.
“There is something to be said about a winning program,” Strand said. “But more than that is the quality of people in it.”
People such as Strand herself.
On this day, the Falcons weren’t practicing. But Strand was in the gym anyway, working out.
“She’s very driven and she’s a perfectionist and she strives for the top,” said her mother, Anne, a geography teacher at King’s. “She had one A-minus in high school and that was devastating to her.”
That A-minus pulled her GPA down to 3.987, still good enough for salutatorian of her senior class
Strand picked SPU because it was close to home.
Just before leaving on a recruiting trip to California during her senior year of high school, she confided to her mother that “If I go to SPU, I can come and see Sarah (her younger sister) play basketball and Grandpa can come and watch me play.”
Grandpa Phillip Oakes has watched his granddaughter grow into a fulltime starter after three years as a key role player, backing up all-league performers. She has become one of the Falcons’ best defenders and she has developed into a strong rebounder and a sterling shooter. She ranks No. 2 in the GNAC with a .548 field-goal percentage and averages 9.5 points per game.
What van Beek likes most about Strand is her consistency, in practice as well as in games. “Rachel,” the coach said, “doesn’t have many off days.”
This despite persistent hip pain that has been with her for several years.
“She used to take her Land Cruiser and bring home tubs of ice from the training room and then fill the bathtub with it and sit in there reading a book,’” her father said. “That’s kind of been her way all along.”
Whatever it takes.
How tough is she? Her dad remembers the first time she scored 20 points in a high school game. Not just because she reached that benchmark, but because she did it with a broken middle finger on her shooting hand. She would come to the sideline and dunk her hand in a bucket of ice water. “You would see her face go, ‘Ahhhhh,” Roger said. “It was pretty impressive. Like this kid’s got guts.”
Has she ever. As a two-year cross country runner, she had never won a race. Then came the state meet her senior year. “In Richland (site of the meet), you could see all these skinny little bodies, then this tall body,” her father recounted. “We had never seen Rachel finish in the top three.”
But halfway through the race, she was running in third place and her dad remembers his daughter shaking her head as if to say, “What’s going on here?” What was going on was a major upset — the tall body overtaking one of the skinny little bodies in the last 300 meters to claim a state championship.
This from a young lady who ran “just to stay in shape for basketball.”
Because of the hip pain caused by the pounding, however, she has had to give up distance running, but she has found a suitable alternative. Last summer, she worked out on a rowing machine at school and found that it caused her no discomfort while keeping her in superb condition.
The crew coach at SPU, Keith Jefferson, was so impressed by her strength and the times she turned in on the rowing machine that he encouraged her to get out on the water in a two-person boat. Her first time out was memorable, in a humbling sort of way. She tipped the boat over. Which is not uncommon for a newcomer, Jefferson said.
Despite the dunking, Strand enjoyed the rowing experience so much that she is going to turn out for the team after the basketball season is over. And if she doesn’t make the varsity eight, Jefferson will be surprised. “She has a reputation as a great all-around athlete and a quality individual,” he said. “We could really use that in our program.”
Not just this spring, but next year also. Though her basketball career ends next month, Strand will return to SPU next year to earn a secondary education certificate so that she can teach in what is called a “high need” school, perhaps in the inner city with kids requiring a little extra attention.
She has experience in that area, having worked for several years at the Royal Family Kids’ Camp, a week-long summer camp for foster kids run by her parents on a volunteer basis. “It’s basically a camp for abused, abandoned or neglected children,” Anne Strand said. “We give them a week and love them and show them positive role models.”
Sixty-six kids attend and there is one adult for every two children. Last year, Rachel worked with only one camper, however, a “very high maintenance” youngster.
“The first night she tried to run away,” Rachel said, “but by the end of the week, she realized how much fun it was and how much we all cared about her.”
“Rachel loves the Lord and wants to be able to bless these kids,” her mother said. “As a parent, it’s wonderful to see your child in the trenches.”
A young lady of two hearts— one competitive, one compassionate.
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