A flattering analogy, but it only paints half the picture of what Sir Alex meant to soccer. With 49 titles under his belt in 39 years as manager, Ferguson indelibly shaped Manchester United, the English Premier League and the global sport of soccer.

Since his arrival to Manchester in 1986, he transformed his club to become the most successful club in England and a global brand recognized by billions across the world. In comparison to Ferguson’s influence, Belichick’s seems miniscule.

Over the past seven days, flocks of journalists, players and coaches paid tribute to Ferguson. I was initially wary of joining the herd by writing my own Ferguson tribute. But upon realizing how influential Sir Alex has been to my childhood, I couldn’t resist.

Ferguson and his Manchester United made me a huge soccer fan, but upon further reflection, he meant a lot more. He was a hero and a teacher for me — being a role model for me to strive toward.

Whenever I think of Ferguson’s influence on me, I drift back to middle school, when  I played pickup soccer. My friends and I all cherry-picked the best qualities of our favorite soccer idols — most of them Manchester United players — and mimicked how they played.

For 30 minutes of lunchtime every day, we were Fergie’s boys. We proudly represented Manchester United from Los Angeles.

I now have a more mature appreciation of Ferguson as a manager and as a man. Now, I aspire to be like Fergie — a man driven by his passion to become the best in his profession yet someone who never forgot his roots and his compassion.

Ferguson was a man of many flaws — most notably, his ruthlessness to his players and journalists — but his strengths ultimately triumphed over his blemishes.

One of the most endearing tributes I’ve read of Ferguson this past week was from a journalist who was banned three times from the Manchester United training grounds. The journalist fondly recalled how Ferguson took time to help out his long time beat writers and regularly attend funerals of staff members and their families.

He knew the line between business and personal. He knew when to be Sir Alex and when to just be Alex. That is something I would like to emulate.

Before I conclude, I want to flash back to July 2005, when Ferguson signed Korean midfielder Park Ji-Sung to Manchester United. As the first Asian player to play in England, Park was my childhood hero, and the signing was a huge moment in my life.

In hindsight, I came to realize that Park’s signing was solely business, but back in 2005, it represented something more. It symbolized that if you worked hard, anybody — even a pockmarked, flat-footed soccer player like Park — can reach his or her dream. It was the American Dream — taking place in northwestern England.

For an immigrant boy like me, who — at the time struggled to fit into the American lifestyle — that was a groundbreaking realization.

Now at Berkeley, I am living a part of the dream. At the same time, Alex Ferguson is moving on, having lived his dream.

While we’ve never crossed paths, I just want him to know how he shaped who I am. I just want to thank him.

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post The UnSeung Hero: Saying goodbye to Sir Alex Ferguson appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Before and after practice, he mingles with his players, cracking light-hearted jokes and dispensing life advice to his players. From the upper stands of Memorial Stadium, you could mistake him for a positional coach, who generally has more personal connections with the players.

“You feel like you’re talking to a teammate,” guard Jordan Rigsbee said. “He’s the kind of guy that’s gonna go through the hard times with you.”

Over the past five months, Dykes, the new coach of the Cal football team, made himself at home in Berkeley. After a divorce between the program and former coach Jeff Tedford this winter, he’s the new hope to rejuvenate the decrepit program marred by a 3-9 record last year.

With his debut just three months away, the carte blanche earns him the benefit of the doubt. In the midst of offseason limbo, he has nothing to hide.

Dykes, speaking softly in slightly masked Texan drawl, has big plans as the new boss of Memorial Stadium. The plans are grandiose and idealistic, but his idealism sometimes borders on quixotic.

Dykes envisions a Cal football team that will uphold themselves to high moral and ethical  standards. As college football, already a billion-dollar business, expands its revenues further, Dykes wants Cal to be the forerunner that fights against the increasingly pervasive mindset of the football-first student-athlete.

“My job is to win football games, but it’s much more than that,” Dykes says. “I certainly wouldn’t feel like I accomplished much if our players didn’t do well and they weren’t integrated into being college students.

“It would feel pretty empty winning.”

In the towns of west Texas, the surname Dykes is a famous football surname. Older football fans remember Spike Dykes, Sonny’s father, as the legendary high school coach who stood on the sidelines on Friday nights from the ’60s to the ’80s.

From 1986 to 1999, Spike moved on to coach Texas Tech in Lubbock, where his son Sonny played baseball.

Spike is a remnant of a bygone era in college football, when the sport was still more localized and national revenue was less lucrative.

“(Our family) didn’t have a lot of money,” Spike says. “But we always really had a good laugh.”

Sonny grew up under the spotlight of his father. As his father created a familial environment for his teams, Sonny wants to bring the same atmosphere to Cal.

“I’ve had the best parents anyone can ever ask for,” Sonny says. “It’s my job to create a family environment for my players.”

Dykes at Berkeley seems out of place. In the urban Bay Area, the emphasis on family and community is more opaque than in the rural west Texan towns.

The money-grabbing in college football is exponentially increasing, and Cal is no exception to it. The Pac-12’s television contract with major networks totals $3 billion over 12 years. Memorial Stadium just had a $321 million facelift.

The old, traditional values associated with Spike Dykes’ time feel buried under the mountains of money. His son can’t contain his disdain for the skyrocketing profits that comes from college sports.

“College athletics is not a business,” Sonny says. “That’s not why it started. Our responsibilities are to enrich the players’ lives and teach them other things aside from block-and-tackle.”

But Dykes is not at war with the reality of lucrative business of college business. He accepts it. At age 43, Dykes signed a contract worth up to $9.8 million to be the 33rd head coach at Cal.

If Father Time had his way, Dykes might best fit coaching a high school worthy of a “Friday Night Lights” episode — much like his father. There, he would preach his message of personal enrichment and influence the lives of his players on and off the field.

But Dykes is not a high school football coach. Dykes is in charge at Cal. Already, he’s taking his first steps to redefine what Cal football will mean for the future.

“It’s just more than playing football,” Dykes says.

Dykes pauses midsentence for several seconds. He’s deep in thought, carefully constructing how he will answer a question about the importance of academic achievement.

Last year, Tedford faced scrutiny after a report came out showing only 47 percent of football players from 2002-5 graduated. Some say that was the coup de grace for Tedford’s firing.

He rambles on about how his performance will be judged on wins and losses, until he cuts himself off. Winning games is crucial, but he hopes to be gauged on a different metric outside the football field.

“From an ethical standpoint, (graduating my players) needs to be the primary focus,” Dykes says. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for (the 47 percent graduation rate). I understand how important it is to get fixed.”

And Dykes already set himself a high goal in terms of graduating his players. He says he  will make sure that every single senior in the program will graduate from Cal by this year.

His emphasis of positive feedback and shared accountability in the team has helped so far. In the locker room, there’s a Player of the Week award projecting on the walls for academic excellence. The special passes to miss classes are now almost nonexistent.

“We are talking more ownership,” linebacker Nick Forbes says. “It’s a lot of the brotherhood picking (each other) up.”

During his three-year stint as Louisiana Tech’s head coach, Dykes had success in improving graduation rates, posting a program-high 76 percent graduation rate.

Dykes held a short leash on players who didn’t focus on academics. In 2011, Dykes had five transfer players from the SEC, but when their academics took a backseat, Dykes canned all five.

“He got the ball rolling,” says Brad Herman, Louisiana Tech football’s academic counselor. “He turned the system from not being organized to being organized.”

Dykes is preparing his players for a life outside of football in campus as well. He wants the team to engage with the community like a big school club.

He has rallied his team to support other Cal sports teams in person and to volunteer, from running a workshop on Cal Day to working in San Quentin prison.

But Dykes sees the progress as a constructive, multiyear process. First, he plans to break down the jock mentality prevalent in student-athletes.

“It’s going to be a constant battle,” Dykes says.

For many players, it’s already a constant battle balancing academic rigors at Berkeley with athletic demands. From 6 a.m. to 8 p.m., most players are in class or practice, leaving them exhausted by the day’s end.

So how much more responsibility can the players take before they succumb to the demand?

“You got to know that 95 percent of the time, the athletes are simply tired,” Forbes said. “(However), it’s building a connective community. I think it’s great.”

On Dec. 19, 13 days after he was hired, Dykes revealed that he was going to hold open practices in a get-to-know-you pizza party with the Cal beat writers.

“Open the gates,” Dykes said at the time. “Come on in. We don’t have any secrets.”

Both open practices and pizza parties with the journalists would have been impossible to fathom when Tedford was still the coach. Tedford kept everyone outside the program at an arm’s length. As his program declined, so did the accessibility.

Dykes’ openness of the program to the public has been a refreshing change welcomed by many. But Dykes insists this is not a reaction to distance himself away from Tedford.

“If you look at my approach in Louisiana Tech and places I have been in the past, I have been that way,” Dykes says. “I don’t see why it can’t work here.”

Inheriting a 3-9 season in a brand-new stadium with poor sales record, Dykes has a brand to sell. Tedford sold his brand through the number of NFL players produced. Dykes is trying to sell it through the kind of accessibility and warmth you would expect when you enter a family home in west Texas.

Frankness and openness builds trust and likability. The trust and likability hopefully will bring Cal better recruits and sell more tickets.

“The more people know of our program, the more comfortable they will be with us,” Dykes says. “Access is deserved by the people.”

Perhaps there is something scheming when Dykes strolls through campus or eats lunch at La Val’s pizzeria. He’s the new kid in class, and he wants to be liked by the students. He wants to sell football tickets, too. Constant exposure might persuade some to come to Memorial Stadium come August.

If that is the case, then Dykes shows no signs of forcing the act in. His laid-back persona always maintains its cool.

Dykes wants his football team to accommodate every student and members in the Cal community. He envisions the entire campus being a part of the Cal football family.

“This is your team —  this is Cal’s team,” Dykes says. “We certainly don’t have anything to hide.”

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post New sheriff in town: Sonny Dykes’ vision for Cal football appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The former Cal wide receiver was drafted by the San Diego Chargers with the 76th overall pick. Allen, the program’s all-time leader in receptions, was the first of four former Cal players to be drafted in this year’s NFL Draft.

“If anyone was going to pick me, I was definitely hoping for San Diego just because of the atmosphere and the place that it is with great weather,” Allen said in a teleconference with Cal athletics.

On Saturday, offensive lineman Brian Schwenke and cornerbacks Steve Williams and Marc Anthony were drafted in the last four rounds of the draft. Schwenke was drafted as the 107th overall pick in the fourth round to the Tennessee Titans, and Anthony was drafted as the 247th overall pick in the seventh round to the Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens.

As the 145th overall pick in the fifth round, Williams will join Allen in San Diego.

“I’m excited to get down there and compete for a job,” Williams said. “It’s nice to know that Keenan’s going, a player that I played with. I’m just excited.”

The 2013 NFL Draft overall was a weak draft for Cal in comparison to its past years. This draft was the second consecutive year that Cal didn’t produce a first round pick. It was the first time since 2006 in which no Cal players were taken in the first two rounds of the draft.

Three undrafted Cal players were signed as free agents after the NFL Draft concluded on Saturday. Offensive lineman Matt Summers-Gavin, running back C.J. Anderson and fullback Eric Stevens were signed by the Arizona Cardinals, Denver Broncos and the St. Louis Rams.

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post Four Cal football players drafted in 2013 NFL Draft appeared first on The Daily Californian.

With CBS Sports ranking Allen as the 13th best prospect — the highest among wide receivers — in the class of 2012, his draft stock was solidly entrenched in the first round.

Fast forward nearly six months, and Allen waited all Thursday afternoon to get that one call from an NFL team, congratulating the former Cal receiver in  being drafted in the first round. Alas, the former Cal receiver never got the call and watched the first 32 picks go by.

Allen’s snub out of the first round was a slow decline rather than a fast spiral down. Injuries to his right knee and concerns about his right ankle concerned many NFL scouts. After injuring his knee while playing against Utah on Oct. 27, Allen has been making a slower than expected recovery. After missing the NFL Combine in February, Allen returned to action in early April at his home in Greensboro, N.C., only to run a mediocre 4.7 40-yard dash time range.

On April 18, a week from the draft, Allen recently went to Indianapolis to get his right ankle rechecked, according to ESPN.

It was not just physical injuries that caused Allen, the all-time leader in receptions in Cal football history, to not getting drafted in the first round. On April 16, Allen was red-flagged for a drug test and was ordered to undergo another test this month. This added more concern for the scouts who were already skeptical about Allen’s fitness beforehand.

With Allen’s omission from the first-round, this marks the second consecutive year in which a Cal football player was not drafted in the first round. The last first round pick from Cal was defensive end Cameron Jordan, who was drafted by the New Orleans Saints in 2011.

The post Keenan Allen snubbed from NFL Draft first round on Thursday appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Before Jack Clark became the coach and legend that redefined the Cal rugby program, he was an athlete once focused on cracking into the professional football ranks.

Transferring from Orange Coast Community College to Cal as a football player, Clark played two years on the football team. In 1978, he tried out for the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL before devoting himself completely to rugby, a late love in his life. In the next coming years, Clark showed he had potential to become a star rugby player on a global scale.

But on a fateful November day in 1980 at San Francisco, Clark was shot and hospitalized for months. His aspirations as a professional athlete effectively came to a screeching halt.

1985:

Since its inception in 1882, the Cal rugby team had only six head coaches through its entire 131-year old history. Before 1985, the Bears won only four national championships. With a 28-year old Jack Clark coming into replace Ned Anderson in 1984, the program reached unmatched success for the next 30 years. Under Clark, the program won 22 national titles.

For every stretch of success, there is a beginning, and for Clark and Cal, it began on May 5, 1985. The Bears defeated Maryland, 31-6, in Pebble Beach, Calif. to win its first title under Clark. The second-year coach, on the top right of the photo, maintained its stern look even as the team celebrated. Perhaps Clark knew celebration was premature: there were still a lot of work to done.

1989:

In this photo, Clark, center, poses with former Cal rugby players and Oxford Varsity Blues Don James, right, and Gary Hein, left in London.

Under Clark’s leadership as the Cal rugby head coach, many of his star pupils continued their rugby success abroad. The long list included James, who starred in the 1985 Cal rugby team that won the national title against Maryland at Pebble Beach, Calif.

1997:

The entire 1990s were Bear Territory.

From 1991 to 2002, the Cal rugby team enjoyed an unmatched run of success, winning 12 consecutive national titles. The success elevated Cal as the preeminent collegiate rugby program in the nation and Clark as the most successful rugby coach in America.

In this photo, Clark, left, is posed with a former Cal player and Oxford Varsity Blue Ray Lehner, right, in London. Much like Hein and James, Lehner followed their rugby alumni’s footsteps to success.

In 1997, the Bears routed Penn State in the national title game, 41-15, in Witter Rugby Field at Berkeley.

2008:

With a new rivalry forging in the 2000s with BYU, Clark and the Cal rugby team faced perennial challenges from the Cougars in the national title game. Starting in the narrow 29-26 victory over BYU in the 2006 national title game, the Bears faced the title game in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 against the Cougars.

In 2008, the Bears faced little challenge against BYU to win its fifth consecutive national title. At Stanford, Calif., the Bears cruised to a 59-7 victory over the Cougars. It was Clark’s 20th national title as well, giving all the more reason for Clark, right, to break out of its hard exterior to celebrate another national title.

2010:

On Sep. 29, 2010, after rumors of downsizing the Cal rugby program was on the chopping block, Clark received the bad news: the University of California announced that the Cal rugby team would be one of the five sports cut from the university’s athletic programs.

Unlike the other four sports, the rugby team will be classified as a “varsity club”, relegated from its varsity program status.

With the Witter Rugby Field in construction at the time of the demotion, it was yet another gut check to the program.

But Clark bounced back quickly, getting enough financial and alumni support to get the program off the chopping block.

By the way, the Bears won another national title against BYU, 19-7.

Seung Y. Lee is the sports editor. Contact him at sylee@dailycal.org.

The post Jack Clark: Through the years appeared first on The Daily Californian.

As the light shined upon the ancient Incan ruins, Fujita, a Cal alumnus and an NFL linebacker, perched on one of its giant stone slabs and signed a one-day contract with the New Orleans Saints. By Tuesday, his contract will expire, and he will no longer be a professional football player.

But Fujita was not at Machu Picchu to fancifully end his NFL career. This journey was never about him in the first place — it was for his friend and former Saints teammate Steve Gleason, who is debilitated by ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Fujita and company carried the wheelchaired Gleason up 10,000 feet to Machu Picchu in a 10-hour journey to raise awareness of ALS. As Fujita signed his contract, Gleason sat by his side.

Over the years, Cal football has produced superstar players like Aaron Rodgers, DeSean Jackson and Tony Gonzalez, but none has been more active in social issues than Fujita. He has been the most exemplary athlete to represent Cal at the professional level.

In addition to having a productive 11-year career in the NFL, which included a Super Bowl ring with the Saints in 2010, Fujita has made his mark in the league as a humanitarian and activist. From the restoration of Louisiana wetlands and the promotion of LGBT rights to ALS awareness, Fujita has forged a reputation as a model NFL player, on and off the field.

Recently, Fujita made national headlines for his New York Times op-ed supporting marriage equality. Playing in a hyper-masculine league in which homosexuality remains a taboo subject, Fujita stepped up as one of the very few athletes who has outspokenly backed the issue. With murmurs that NFL players might come out in the foreseeable future, Fujita is currently at the forefront of creating an environment for what could be a seminal moment in professional sports history.

As Fujita leaves his professional playing days behind, a new crop of collegiate athletes waits to enter the league via this weekend’s NFL Draft. Hundreds of athletes, including a handful from Cal, will wait for their chance to get their golden ticket to play football and earn millions of dollars.

But what this society needs more from the NFL — or any professional league — are player-activists like Fujita. Although lionizing athletes as heroes is a wary path to tread, the impact that professional athletes can have on a community is significant and positive.

It’s foolish to expect that a majority of the professional athletes will become player-activists like Fujita. But it’s not wishful thinking to expect more athletes outspoken and active on social causes.

The best place to foster this mentality is at the university level, and UC Berkeley has the prime prestige and precedent to spearhead the changes. Many of Cal’s student-athletes —  some of whom will become professional athletes, Olympians, etc. — are already active in non-athletic groups, but the activism is still limited.

Fujita was interviewed two years ago by The Daily Californian and stated that he believed Cal student-athletes, while more active in comparison to those at other campuses, were not fulfilling their potential.

For the Cal community, the legacy Fujita forged is not just a badge of honor — it is a mandate that needs an heir for the advancement of the world we live in.

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post The UnSeung Hero: Scott Fujita and the spirit of social activism appeared first on The Daily Californian.

And on Monday at Bristol, Conn., Clarendon did not have to wait long. With the ninth pick of the 2013 WNBA Draft, the Indiana Fever selected the senior.

Accompanied by coach Lindsay Gottlieb and her father to the draft selection show, Clarendon was the highest WNBA pick in program history. After a heroic string of performances during this year’s March Madness that led the team to its first-ever Final Four, Clarendon cemented her draft stock in the first-round range.

With the Fever, Clarendon will likely be utilized as a shooting guard off the bench. With her midrange jumper as her main weapon, she will be an offensive plug who brings speed and energy to the Indiana backcourt.

The post Layshia Clarendon drafted by WNBA team Indiana Fever in first round appeared first on The Daily Californian.

UC Berkeley undergraduates Michelle Nacouzi, Nolan McPeek-Bechtold and Annika McPeek-Bechtold said they finished the race before the explosion occurred. Both Nacouzi and Nolan McPeek-Bechtold confirmed with The Daily Californian that they were safe and far from the explosion at Boylston Street. Junior Catherine Hall, who was a spectator at the marathon, was also reported safe from the explosion.

Anna Lieb, a UC Berkeley graduate student, and Shinji Nakadai, a computer science research fellow on campus, also completed the marathon and were listed as safe on Google People Finder, an online database that allows people to report when they hear from others in the aftermath of a disaster.

Four others connected to the Berkeley community — Douglas Letterman, Cecillia Su, Laurel Collins and Carl Kempf — were also listed as safe on the database. According to the Boston Marathon database, 25 runners were from the city of Berkeley. Nineteen runners were confirmed to have finished the marathon before the explosion.

“It sounded like a water cannon went off,” said Lucretia Ausse, a Berkeley resident who was a block away from the explosion. “Then, 10 seconds later, there was a second explosion. And we saw the plumes.”

Ausse confirmed with the Daily Cal that she is safe and suffered no injuries.

According to campus Assistant Athletic Director Herb Benenson, no UC Berkeley student-athletes were at Boston competing in the world-renowned marathon.

The Daily Cal is still looking for UC Berkeley students, faculty and alumni as well as Berkeley residents who participated in the Boston Marathon. If you have any further information, please email newsdesk@dailycal.org.

Senior staff writer Amruta Trivedi contributed to this report.

Contact Seung Y. Lee at sylee@dailycal.org if you know any Berkeley residents or students who were participating at the Boston Marathon.

The post At least 11 Berkeley residents and students safe after Boston Marathon explosions appeared first on The Daily Californian.

All traditional powerhouses, like UConn and Stanford, had that special season in which they made the leap to elite status. UConn, under coach Geno Auriemma, made its first Final Four in 1995 and has won seven national championships since. Stanford, under coach Tara VanDerveer, took its jump as the dominant women’s basketball club on the West Coast in 1990 with a national championship.

In 2013, the Bears stand at a crossroads. The 32 wins this season and the journey to their first Final Four appearance paved two paths that forked as the season came to a close on Sunday: Can Cal continue its development as a perennial Final Four contender? Or will it peter off back into being Pac-12’s No. 2 behind Stanford?

With the 64-57 loss to Louisville in the Final Four at New Orleans, four seniors who constituted the greatest recruiting class in program history are no longer with the team. Picked as the best recruiting class back in 2009, they have more than met expectations. Before coach Lindsay Gottlieb’s arrival in 2011, the program was in slow decline, missing out on the NCAA Tournament and marred by a growing list of players transferring from Cal.

Of the four, guard Layshia Clarendon leaves the biggest hole. Once the lowest-ranked player in the class of 2009, Clarendon established herself as the primary scoring option and the central leader of the team.

On the court, Clarendon developed her game from that of an average combo guard to a nationally acclaimed shooting guard. She perfected her midrange jumper in her senior season, making her a coveted player in the upcoming WNBA draft.

As Clarendon leaves the Bears’ backcourt, she will pass the torch to sophomore guard Brittany Boyd. The symbiosis between Clarendon and Boyd over the past two years was a match made in heaven; Clarendon’s weaknesses, such as ballhandling and distributing, were veiled by Boyd’s excellent point guard skills.

Without Clarendon’s presence, Boyd will be put on the spotlight, and the shortcomings of her game will be targeted by opposing teams. For the Bears’ to succeed in the next two seasons, Boyd will need to develop a more consistent shooting game and lessen the recklessness in her playing style.

But Boyd won’t be alone in the backcourt.

Brittany Shine, who transferred last year from Florida, provides an interesting wrinkle in Cal’s high-octane offense. Although Shine has not played for the Bears this season due to in-residence transfer rules, Gottlieb praised her speed and experience in the SEC and believes she will slide into the backcourt without creating any awkwardness.

Shine will be joined next year by Kyra Dunn, a forward who transferred from Pittsburgh. With senior center Talia Caldwell leaving, Dunn will keep the post rotation in tune.

In addition to Shine and Dunn, there will be freshmen on the team for the first time since 2011. Excluding Gennifer Brandon, Mikayla Lyles, Avigiel Cohen and Afure Jemerigbe, the rest of the team will have been recruited by Gottlieb to come to Berkeley.

For the first time, Gottlieb will have a chance to sculpt the team to her philosophy. However, this can also mean the team trailing off from its Final Four zenith back into rebuilding mode as the players pick up Gottlieb’s system and adjust to the collegiate game.

But is there pressure for Gottlieb to make the Final Four again? Yes, Auriemma and VanDerveer made their first Final Four appearances when they were around Gottlieb’s current age (35), but it took them several more years to cement their elite status.

Yes, the team does stand at a forked road that can redefine how this program fits in the national landscape. But one, two or four years down the line is too early to tout Cal’s premier standing.

The verdict will come 10 or 20 years from now, when all point to 2013 as the season that started it all

Seung Y. Lee covers men’s basketball. Contact him at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post With Gottlieb at the helm, Cal women’s basketball experiences breakthrough season appeared first on The Daily Californian.

As Gottlieb walked to the podium, I remember thinking how she looked far too young to lead a Division I basketball team. As she began to speak at a lightning-fast pace, I remember scribbling illegible notes to keep up.

But the biggest takeaway from that day for me was the genuine excitement that pervaded the room, from the coaches and players. Players and coaches of other sports all say before the season that they are excited to start, but I could have sliced through this team’s enthusiasm that day with a knife and served it on plates.

And for the next 18 months, I covered the team, following their play from Berkeley to Stanford to now, in New Orleans. And through the next 18 months, the eagerness in that Haas Club Room never faded — it only grew.

As the women’s basketball beat reporter last year, I had lots of fun covering the games and interviewing the team. Gottlieb and the players had nothing to hide and shared a wealth of information with me, making my job easier.

But that genuineness of the team won me over underneath my reporter’s facade. Their camaraderie, openness and on-court success made it hard for me to remain truly indifferent.

Despite ceding the beat to new writers this year, I followed the team closely and was always impressed at the rate of its growth. Last year, I was in the upper press box at the edges of Maples Pavilion, getting excited as Cal took Stanford to overtime; now, the Bears were slaying Stanford-sized goliaths, including Stanford itself at Maples, left and right.

Now, here I am in New Orleans, two days after Cal’s first-ever Final Four appearance in program history. The team achieved previously unreached heights, and as a person who saw the team grow under Gottlieb to become a Final Four contender, I found it incredibly rewarding to see.

I was there in the near-empty Haas Pavilion for the start of the Gottlieb era last year. I wanted to be in the New Orleans Arena covering the peak moment of Cal women’s basketball.

I wanted to save this column for after Tuesday after the Bears advanced to the title game. But that didn’t happen. On Sunday night, Cal’s lead slipped away in the final moments to Louisville.

My disappointment only multiplied when I saw Gottlieb and the players looking glum through the postgame press conference. The ride was over. The excitement was no longer there.

Despite the bitter taste of the season’s end, I wanted to remember this team from two angles. First, these two seasons were probably the best stretch in Cal women’s basketball history. Second, they were able to reach such unprecedented success with student-athletes who were passionate about their university and their fans no like others.

There were no better representatives to symbolize Cal in New Orleans and on national television than this team.

Once upon a time, before I started covering women’s basketball, someone older and wiser told me the two sacred rules of journalism. The first was to remain objective at all times. The second was to remain empathetic to your subjects.

I may be breaking the first sacred rule today with this column, but I couldn’t let this opportunity go by without saying the following words:

Congratulations to coach Gottlieb and the team for reaching the Final Four. It was one heck of a ride, and I was privileged to see it from beginning to end.

Seung Y. Lee covers men’s basketball. Contact him at sylee@dailycal.org Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.

The post Congratulations to a special group of women appeared first on The Daily Californian.