WCC Women’s Basketball 2024 Media Day Recap

LAS VEGAS — Change is everywhere in college athletics these days, and that certainly is true in the West Coast Conference as we approach the start of the 2024-25 women’s basketball season.
 
Oregon State and Washington State have joined the WCC for the next two seasons and add strength to the league. Pepperdine has a new coach in Katie Faulkner, who took the reins in April. 
 
And at Santa Clara, long-time associate head coach Michael Floyd moved to a new desk in the same office last Saturday when Bill Carr stepped down after eight years, including a 25-win season in 2023-24.
 
But no one in the WCC experienced the real-life jolt that hit Gonzaga women’s coach Lisa Fortier last Feb. 6 when she was informed she had Stage 2-3 breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes.
 
Fortier, whose team was in the stretch run of a 32-4 season that led to a berth in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament, was told by her doctors that she could finish out the season while a treatment strategy was developed.
 
She had surgery in April and underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments most of the summer. Her players helped their 43-year-old coach celebrate last Monday after she completed her final radiation session.
 
“I feel really good. I’m done with all my treatment. It takes a while apparently to recover. I’m ready to start doing that,” Fortier said Wednesday at WCC media day in Las Vegas. “There’s a lot of growth that’s happened over the past year. Life gives you different times for perspective.”
 
She accepts she must manage her energy, set boundaries, find time to rest. “I’m not 100 percent yet,” she said. There will be blood draws and checkups every three months for a while. But the news is good. “I’m cancer-free.”
 
Fortier has come away from the experience with a new view of many things and the kind of appreciation for life that comes with walking that scary path.
 
“We get so bogged down that you have to win at all costs, that you have to recruit at all costs,” she said, suggesting that finding time to exhale has become important. “I’m not saying don’t work hard. But we get pulled into this rat race. There’s some things I really like how we do at Gonzaga. And some things, we can do that a little bit better.”
 
Her players are grateful for her return to health and impressed by how she has maneuvered the challenges.
 
“It’s just been inspiring how she shows up every day,” senior guard Esther Little said. “If you didn’t see her lose her hair, you wouldn’t know anything was different. She acts the same, treats everyone else the same. It’s just admirable to have someone in such a powerful position to follow and lead the way and fight the way she did over the summer.”
 
Little said once a week for five weeks Fortier finished an off-season practice and immediately went to a radiation session.
 
She did more than that. Six days after a chemo treatment in late July, Fortier flew to Paris to surprise Zags star Yvonne Ejim, who was playing for the Canadian Olympic team.
 
Fortier called it “like a proud parent moment.”
 
“It was emotional,” she acknowledged. “The very first game we sat right behind the bench in the first row and just seeing her in that uniform, knowing what it meant to her was meaningful. She had been talking about that since we started recruiting her as a freshman in high school.”
 
The emotions at that moment flowed both directions. Ejim was warming up before the game when she spotted her coach. “Oh my gosh look who it is,” she recalled. “That was super cool.”
 
Washington State coach Kamie Ethridge and USF’s Molly Goodenbour will be ferociously coaching against Fortier in the coming months. But on Wednesday they felt almost a sense of awe for their WCC counterpart.
 
“I sit in admiration of her to watch how those kids respond to her. They’ve always done that, but now they have a lot more to play for,” Ethridge said. “It gets down to this is the realness of life and she’s living on the edge right now and living it up. I think that’s how we all should live.”
 
“She looks great. A lot of it is her, but it just shows the great support around her and what love can do.”
 
Goodenbour noted everyone deals with stresses in their lives, but some of them are blindsided by news like this.
 
“I can only imagine,” she said. “And now you add a dimension of the unknown. With cancer, you don’t know. She’s handled it like a professional, she’s handled it with grace, she’s handled it with tremendous courage.”
 
“To be able to be as public as she is with it and comfortable with whatever happens this is who I am, this is what I represent, I think that says a lot about her and her character and her courage.”
 
Fortier said above all else she feels a deep sense of gratitude to so many people who are close to her and so many she doesn’t even know.
 
“It’s been pretty remarkable. I think it was a little bit overwhelming for my husband,” she said. “We have a full building, so I know there’s at least 6,000 people who care about Gonzaga women’s basketball. I feel like I’ve heard from most of them — via social media, texts, cards that have come in or flowers they have brought or food that’s been dropped off.”
 
“I don’t know if it’s humbling, but wow! All of those things have been moments of huge gratitude and wanting to be that for someone else when someone else is going through it because I know the impact it’s made.”
 
SISTERS RE-UNITE IN MALIBU: Makena Mastora and older sister Malia played basketball together on club teams and at St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in the Bay Area community of Alameda. Then they went their separate ways to college.
 
They are teammates again at Pepperdine under new coach Katie Faulkner. “I’m honestly thrilled,” said Makena, who is a year younger although both are classified as seniors. “This opportunity to get to play our last years together it’s going to mean so much.”
 
There was no master to make this happen. Makena came from Saint Mary’s College while Malia played last season at Cal State San Marcos. Makena committed after a long phone conversation with Faulkner, who was driving through Texas on a recruiting trip at the time. A week later, Faulkner was talking with Makena’s father, who mentioned there’s another sister.
 
The coach did her homework and decided she wanted both sisters. “Two amazing, high-character people who play well off each other,” Faulkner said.
 
GAELS YOUNG STAR ON THE SHELF: Zeryhia Aokuso had quite a debut season at Saint Mary’s, averaging 12.1 points and earning WCC Freshman of the Year honors. The offseason hasn’t been quite as kind.
 
The Amarillo, Texas native suffered a stress fracture in her foot shortly after the season ended and recovered from that only to discover she had torn the meniscus in her knee, requiring surgery. She practices so far on a very limited basis and probably won’t be available for games until early December.
 
“We’re taking it slow,” second-year coach Jeff Cammon said, referring to the fact that Aokuso previously tore her ACL in the same knee in high school.
 
Aokuso is trying to be patient. “Right now, just easing into things,” she said. “I’ve been through it before, so I know what it’s about.”