Doris Draving, former Albuquerque Academy coach, helped lay foundation for women's basketball

Aug.

24Toughen up, girls.That was the message Doris Draving imparted to the Albuquerque Academy's girls basketball players during her all-too-brief tenure as a Chargers assistant coach in the 1990s.But there was more, much more, friends say, to Doris the coach, Doris the player and Doris the person."My goal as a coach," Draving told Albuquerque Journal correspondent Nick Greenwalt in March 1990, "is that every player goes home every day feeling good about herself."Draving's own life, those friends and former colleagues say, was a feel-good story that has ended too soon.A high school, college and professional basketball star and an important but sometimes forgotten contributor to the development of the women's game, Draving died from cancer in California on Aug.

1.

She was 69.Draving's name seldom is mentioned in the same breath as Carol Blazejowski, Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, Molly Bolin and others who brought women's basketball into the national consciousness in the 1970s-80s.

She wasn't a prolific scorer within the ranks of the short-lived (1978-81) Women's Professional Basketball League.She was, however, among the the WBL's all-time leading rebounders as a 6-foot-1 post player."I believe she averaged double-doubles in high school, college and the pros," said Molly Kazmer, who as Molly Bolin averaged more than 30 points per game as a teammate of Draving's on the WBL's Iowa Cornets and San Francisco Pioneers.

"But when you play with somebody like me, the ball doesn't come to you that much."It's unclear precisely when and why Draving, a Pennsylvania native, came to New Mexico.

She was the subject of a Journal story in 1984, when she was working in Albuquerque as a physical therapist's aide.Taryn Bachis, who hired her as an assistant at the Academy circa 1990, said she believed Draving might have come to Albuquerque in hopes of playing here professionally.

But Draving's name does not appear in newspaper archives in connection with the New Mexico Energee, a Norm Ellenberger-coached entry in the ill-fated Ladies Professional Basketball Association.

The Energee played only three games before the LPBA came crashing down in December 1980.At the time, Draving and Bolin were playing for the San Francisco Pioneers.

Bolin played in a WBL All-Star game at Albuquerque's Civic Auditorium in February 1981, staged here in hopes of attracting a WBL franchise.

But the WBL folded after the '80-81 season.In any case and for whatever reason, Draving was living in Albuquerque and was introduced to Bachis, who hired her at the Academy.Draving coached the Academy's girls middle-school team and was Bachis' varsity assistant.

She came to the job in an era during which few girls had grown up aspiring to be basketball players and often were still new to the game when they reached their teens."The girls weren't as aggressive (at the time)," said Bachis, who had starred at Eldorado and at UNM before entering the coaching ranks.

"She brought in, because she was a post player, her aggressiveness, to the practices."In the 1990 Journal article, Draving said of her Academy players, "They have to learn it's OK to dive for a loose ball."Yet, Bachis said, that message of toughness was delivered with tender loving care."She was great to coach with," Bachis said.

"She always kept us on our toes with her sense of humor and just an outlook on life that was always very positive."Draving's stay in Albuquerque ended when she moved to Florida to care for her mother.

Draving was hired in 1995 as the girls head coach at Shorecrest Prep in St.

Petersburg (nicknamed Chargers, as is the Academy), then taught and coached for years at Blessed Sacrament Catholic School in Seminole.After her death, a former Blessed Sacrament student posted on the school's Facebook page: "Amazing coach, she taught us more than just how to play sports."Had Draving stayed in Albuquerque, Bachis said, she likely would have become a girls head coach somewhere in the area."She might have even taken my spot," she said with a laugh.Draving's playing career began at Bishop McDevitt High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Patrick Knapp, who was two years ahead of Draving at Bishop McDevitt, remembers watching her play the four-on-four, half-court version of the game that girls were having to play at the time."You could tell with her size and aggressiveness she was going to be pretty good," said Knapp, a former New Mexico State women's coach (1983-86) who lives in Las Cruces.

"I believe by her senior year the Pennsylvania high schools were playing five-on-five."She was very aggressive, very dedicated to being a factor on the floor."After high school, Draving played at East Stroudsburg (Pennsylvania) University, where on Dec.

12, 1975, she poured in a Koehler Fieldhouse record 44 points in a 79-75 loss to Queens College.After college, Draving played for an AAU team called the Allentown Crestettes before signing on with the Cornets in the WBL.Of her reduced scoring role with the Cornets, Kazmer said, "she didn't mind.

She loved to rebound.

She loved boxing out."...

She knew where to go (after a missed shot), especially when I shot, and I shot a lot.

She knew exactly where the ball would come off, and she was there fighting for it on every play," Kazmer said.As fierce a rebounder as Draving was, she was that funny."Doris is our team wit," Bolin once said during their playing days.

"We tell her somebody must have kept her in cave for seven years to make her so funny."Draving's playing career ended with the collapse in 1984 of the Women's American Basketball Association the same year Draving was interviewed in Albuquerque by Journal correspondent Peggy Cohen.In Albuquerque, Draving one evening turned on the TV and saw Jane Metzler, a classmate of hers at Bishop McDevitt, doing the news on KOAT-TV.

The old friends reconnected."I was student council president, and it was sort of my job to go to all the games and get people to go to the games," said Metzler, who lives in New Jersey and continues to work in radio and TV.

"And Doris was amazing."...

You know, everyone loved her.

She still kept in touch with people from Albuquerque (after leaving for Florida)."Knapp, who'd embarked on a college women's coaching career that took him to Notre Dame, Georgetown and Penn as well as NMSU, had lost touch with Draving after high school.

But, having Facebook friends in common, they reconnected online."Doris didn't have that kind of impact," Knapp said, referencing Blazejowski and Bolin.

"But she was right up there.

And she continued to support and promote women's basketball when she got into her educational career."After her mother's death, Draving moved to California.

After developing abdominal pain, she was diagnosed with multiple forms of cancer and died a short time later.Kazmer, who lives in California, said she and Draving enjoyed reminiscing about their time together in the WBL during her friend and teammate's final days."My job was to remind her of what a bad-ass rebounder she was," Kazmer said.

"And, you know, just keep those memories of those glory days alive.".

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