Second-year coach at Juan Diego honored

Intermountain Catholic

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DRAPER — Juan Diego Catholic High School’s Natalie Williams was recently selected by her peers as the UHSAA 3A Region 10 Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.

"I was really excited when it was announced that I was the Region 10 Coach of the Year because to me this is an awesome honor," said Williams. "It’s my first real coaching award and it’s really cool that my peers chose me."

Chris Long, Juan Diego athletic director, said, "All of the credentials Natalie brings to our girls basketball program are phenomenal. As an athlete at Taylorsville High School, she was the Utah High School Athlete of the Century. In basketball at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], she was the PAC 10 Athlete of the Decade. She was also an Olympic gold medalist in basketball. She is just an incredibly talented young woman. Natalie also had a career in the WNBA [Women’s National Basketball Association]."

Williams’ vast experience is a great blessing for the school, said Long. "She is an incredible role model for young women and our girls’ basketball program," he said. "She is a phenomenal classroom and physical education teacher and a great ambassador for our school."

For the second year in a row, Williams led the Soaring Eagle girls’ basketball team to a Region 10 championship with a 19-3 record this year.

Williams started playing basketball in the seventh grade, "which is late compared to when the girls start playing these days," she said. As a high school senior, she was a member of the state championship team in both basketball and volleyball.

Williams went to UCLA on a volleyball scholarship, but also played basketball. She was on the 1990 and 1991 national volleyball championship teams. During her senior year at UCLA, she was a Division I First Team All-American for volleyball and basketball and was inducted into the UCLA Hall of Fame in 2004.

Following college, Williams trained with the U.S. national volleyball team for the 1996 Olympics and "I was the last one cut, so I switched to basketball and four years later made the 2000 Summer Olympic basketball team to play in Sydney, Australia and won a gold medal," she said.

In the meantime Williams was a 1998 American Basketball League Most Valuable Player and ABL All-Star with Portland Power. In 1999, she was the USA Basketball Player of the Year.

Williams played for the Utah Starzz and the Indiana Fever in the WNBA as a power forward and was a four-time All-Star from 1999 to 2003. She retired in 2006 and returned to Utah, where she spent the next six years as the assistant coach at Skyline High School, competing for the 5A state championship three times and winning twice.

Williams is in her second year at Juan Diego, and now as a new coach her goal was "to help the young women succeed and win, but also to teach them life skills," she said. "I want them to understand that basketball is a tool for them to learn how to grow as young women and how to handle conflict and success, how to be humble, and to be encouraging of other people; just how to go through tough times in their lives and be gracious winners as well."

The Soaring Eagle team had three losses this season, "and they all hurt in their own individual way," said Williams. "Sometimes we forget how hard it is to win, so when we win we still want to be gracious. I want to teach them to be thankful for how fortunate they are as athletes and as people and how to treat others because in the end when basketball is over, it’s not the actual basketball that they’ll remember, it’s the experiences and the fun times they had with their teammates and coaches."