Noah Godwin
Assistant Sports Editor
Photo by Graham Shea/Assistant Photo Editor
From left, Vanessa Nygaard, Julie Rousseau, Kate Paye and David Johnson will make up the new Pepperdine women’s basketball team.
Former Los Angeles Sparks coach Julie Rousseau, and new head coach of the women’s basketball team, headlines the incoming roster of new Pepperdine coaches.
New coaches have been added to the women’s tennis, volleyball and soccer teams.
Rousseau brings a wealth of experience in the college game after serving as assistant coach for the Stanford women’s basketball team for the past four years, helping the Cardinal to a record of 105-26.
“I am extremely excited to join the Pepperdine family,” Rousseau said. “I am excited to be coming back home. I am a Los Angeles product, and I have always received a lot of support from the people in the area while I was a high school coach, and also when I was at the L.A. Sparks.”
Rousseau becomes only the fifth head coach in the 29-year history of the program, taking over for Mark Trakh who assumed the University of Southern California head coaching position after 11 years with Pepperdine. She coached the Sparks in various positions from May 1997 to July 1998.
Rousseau said she is excited about her coaching staff, which includes two former Stanford players, Kate Paye and Vanessa Nygaard, and David Johnson, an assistant coach with extensive knowledge of the Southern California talent pool.
Paye played three years in the WNBA and won a national championship in 1992 with Stanford.
While in the WNBA, Paye earned her law and MBA degrees and spent a year away from basketball practicing law.
When Paye decided she could not do without the game, Rousseau quickly added Paye to the staff, praising the experience she could bring, having been successful in both the basketball and professional worlds.
Nygaard brings with her the experience of three Final Four appearances while at Stanford, six years in the WNBA and a year serving as an assistant coach at California State University, Long Beach.
While at Stanford, Nygaard helped the Cardinal to 113-14 mark, including a 69-2 record within the Pac-10.
Johnson joins Pepperdine after spending three years as an assistant at California State University, San Bernadino.
He previously had stints with San Bernardino Valley College, where he turned around a struggling program and won the Foothill Conference championship in the 2001 season.
He also has coached high school basketball, winning two league championships with Washington High in Los Angeles.
While all of the new women’s basketball coaches have proven themselves to be motivators for excellence on the court, Rousseau said she is prepared to demand more than just excellence in basketball from her staff.
“I believe that our staff will be great examples for our student-athletes to follow,” Rousseau said. ‘We will prepare our players to be successful student-athletes who graduate and are ready to make positive contributions to our community.”
While women’s basketball is the only program receiving an entirely fresh slate of coaches, several new faces are joining Pepperdine coaching staffs this year.
The new assistant women’s tennis coach, Cintia Tortorella, is anything but new to the Pepperdine family.
Tortorella was an all-WCC singles player in 2000 and 2001, leading the Waves to a 64-19 overall record and three WCC Championships in her three years with the team.
Tortorella joins Pepperdine from Baylor, a story head coach Gualberto Escudero likes to tell.
“I recommended her to the Baylor University tennis program and the coach there called to recommend her back to me, which shows what a valuable person she is,” Escudero said.
Throughout her junior tennis career, Tortorella played in tournaments around the world at the biggest venues in tennis such as Roland Garros, where the French Open is played.
“I feel fortunate to be back at Pepperdine because I have so many great memories of this place,” Tortorella said.
The powerful women’s volleyball program looks to gain even more momentum with the addition of assistant coach Tim Nollan.
Nollan was the volunteer assistant at USC in his first and only year with the Trojans, a year the Trojans won the national championship with a 35-0 record.
Twila Kaufman and Kevin Eagleston join the women’s soccer program this year. Kaufman was a four-year starter at Arizona and is a native of Los Angeles.
The two new coaches join a program with expectations on the national level after a preseason ranking of 22 in the Soccer America poll.
08-30-2004