After tenth period on Friday, November 9 in the third floor gymnasium, coach Phil Fisher and the Vixens, the girls’ varsity volleyball team, had put up the volleyball net, taken out the volleyballs and began practicing for their second round playoff match against Boys and Girls High School the following Sunday.
An hour and a half later, the volleyball net was taken down and the volleyballs were put away. And as the Vixens headed for the locker room, the Runnin’ Rebels, the boys’ varsity basketball team, headed into the gymnasium as Fisher took out the basketballs to prepare for a scrimmage against Samuel Gompers High School, the team who beat the Rebels in the second round of the playoffs last season. At 5:15 p.m., Fisher was pacing up and down the sideline, coaching the Rebels.
Between the two practices, Fisher said, “I take a deep breath.”
In the end, Fisher had logged approximately three and a half hours of coaching involving two teams of different sports and different sex. “Volleyball from 3:30 to 5:10, basketball from 5:10 to seven,” said Fisher, who is in his second straight year of balancing coaching duties between the Vixens, who compete in the fall, and the Rebels, who play in the winter. “[Assistant Principal Physical Education and Health Martha] Singer thinks I’m a little crazy to do this to myself, but coaching is my passion.”
Fisher’s passion for volleyball has lasted 13 years, while his coaching duties with the Rebels began last year following the departure of former Rebels’ coach Eric Connolly. “Coaching boys’ basketball for the first time in 18 years was a huge challenge and I felt that I had to prove myself all over again,” Fisher said.
Double-duty coaching is necessary. The playoffs extend the Vixens’ season into November. And while the boys’ basketball season does not begin until the end of November, basketball practices needed to overlap the Vixens’ season. “So much of basketball is teamwork. Getting to play with your teammates is such an important aspect,” senior and Rebel Jake LaMountain said.
Fisher’s first year working with two teams at once was “hugely rewarding and tremendously draining,” Fisher said. He spent last fall rebuilding a volleyball team that lost two of their best players, Mimi Russler (’06) and Reyna Ramirez (’06), after they had graduated. The Vixens lost to John F. Kennedy High School in the quarterfinals, a result that senior and Vixens’ co-captain Laura Genes insists was not due to Fisher’s double duties. “I don’t think the reason we lost in the quarters last year had anything to do with the overextension of Mr. Fisher. It had more to do with us,” Genes said.
Fisher then dealt with the task of building a basketball team. “There was a lot of unknown last year. I didn’t know the coaches, the boys, the referees. It was all starting over again from scratch,” Fisher said.
Last year was mentally challenging for not only Fisher, but for both the Vixens and the Rebels. “Last year’s transition period was new for him as well as it was new for us,” junior and Vixen Tina Khiani said. “The volleyball team was sort of angry at first because we thought we were being cheated out of practice time. But at the same time, we knew that the boys’ basketball team must feel cheated too. They have to stay late at school and wait for us to finish.”
Coaching never finished for Fisher, however. After the Rebels’ playoff loss to Gompers High School last February, Fisher had another transition period into coaching the Mimbas, the girls’ soccer team. But after six straight months of coaching, the side effects were apparent. “I got sick. I broke down in February and I couldn’t go on my vacation. I lost airline tickets and I got a 103-degree fever. I finally ran out of gas,” Fisher said.
The Mimbas, who came off a 6-5 season in 2006, lost to Bayside High School, 3-0, in the semifinals last June. By then, Fisher had coached three different Stuyvesant teams for ten months. “I didn’t really have a break last year from the last week of August until the first week of June when the playoffs ended,” said Fisher, who decided to give up coaching soccer after the Mimbas’ season ended. “I didn’t feel that I had enough left for the soccer team.”
Fisher started this year better organized, knowing he’d have to go through another three weeks of double duty. “I had every practice worked out in my mind on a calendar for both volleyball and basketball by the end of September. I already knew what I was going to do through November 17,” Fisher said.
Part of Fisher’s plan was to build the Vixens as early as possible. “[Fisher] tried to focus his time more with us earlier in the season and started getting us ready for the finals from day one. He wanted us to get into playoff mode right from the start of the season,” Khiani said.
Genes said that Fisher’s strategy pulled through. “We’ve worked very hard as a team and we feel confident at this point in the season that we can do without the extra hours,” she said.
The shortened practices have forced the Vixens to spend the time that they have wisely, an aspect that Khiani sees as an advantage. “Because we have short practices, we had to focus much harder during the short time that we had,” Khiani said. “It’s more about focusing on what we have to bring to the court than just basic fundamentals.”
The Rebels, meanwhile, have had to stay later in school and arrive home as late as nine p.m. “We complain that we have to stay so late for basketball, but so does [Fisher],” LaMountain said.
The late practices for the Rebels have forced them to be better organized. “It affects them because they are the ones who have to keep up with their work,” Fisher said. “When you’re an athlete here and you have to budget your time, you really have to be more on top of things.”
Many players think that Fisher has been on top of his coaching duties, including LaMountain and Khiani, who, like Fisher, are both transitioning from their fall sport to their winter. “[Fisher] cares about basketball as much as their playoffs. He definitely enjoys coaching and still stays focused,” said LaMountain, who four days prior to Friday’s practice, played with the Ballerz, the boys’ soccer team, in a quarterfinal game.
Khiani’s transition from volleyball to girls’ basketball has helped her understand what Fisher is going through. “I wish we had more practice but at the same time, I completely understand that basketball needs their time too,” Khiani said.
After coaching two teams for nearly three weeks, Fisher said that he understands what Stuyvesant students go through each day. “Stuy students are what really motivate me because I know that they are off doing projects and stuff like that and I figure ‘Shoot, I can tough it out,’” Fisher said.