Samo legend, Verdugo to retire

Sintra MartinsStaff WriterGirls’ basketball coach and former history teacher Marty Verdugo is retiring after nine years of service at Samo. Verdugo will continue his love for coaching by opening a summer program that will help students navigate with “mind, body and spirit” through basketball.According to Verdugo, it is the students that come back from previous years that validate his love for coaching.“I hope the impression I leave is one that [the students] can fall back on and go, ‘he was always trying to make us better,’” Verdugo said. “Some of that might have been a little bit abrasive, I think I may have left that impression on some, but I think I’m hearing enough from the players three, four, five years down the road to feel like I will leave a good impression on how to lead successful lives and have good character.”Samo graduate and four year girls’ varsity player, Lilly Feder is one student that came back after high school to work with the team and aid Verdugo in getting his summer program off the ground.“He’s a great guy as well as a great coach. It’s easy for me to want to come back and help him continue what he was doing with me with others,” Feder said.Although not all of Verdugo’s teaching methods were fully accepted, he will carry with him the memories of those students for whom he made a difference.“I had to really learn, though I haven’t  always done a great job, that there are different techniques that have to be used, in some cases, for coaching girls. This year has taught me a lot. I’ve evolved from the red-faced kind of mad, crazy, on-the-sideline-coach I used to be,” Verdugo said. “When I leave here now, I’m a softer person than I was six years ago.”According to senior and varsity captain Aneise Palmore, Verdugo’s aid reached beyond athletics.“He helped me become a leader so everyone can follow my example,” Palmore said.Senior Emily Duran agrees that Verdugo helped his students grow in many ways.“We’ve gotten a lot of words of wisdom from him,” Duran said.In addition to that of  his students, Verdugo has earned the admiration of his colleagues.“This year he’s been totally invigorated, I think by the players. They have a really cool bond that has fed him energetically and professionally. It’s been really fun watching the team grow under his tutelage,” assistant coach Jason Battung said. “This year he’s really just enjoyed himself and enjoyed the process of coaching and teaching student athletes. He’s just a very considerate person.”Before assuming his post at Samo, Verdugo coached in Redwoods, California. From there, he took a small hiatus in Los Angeles before working on the coaching staff for the NBA winning team, The San Antonio Spurs.“It was one of the most exciting times of my life. It was a hard-working year because there was a strike, so there were a lot of games in a little bit of time. I worked 68 days in a row, 14-hour days,” Verdugo said. “It turned out that it was the year that the Spurs won their first NBA championship. We ended up winning it in New York, Madison Square Garden. This opened up a lot of doors for me.”After San Antonio, Verdugo started coaching at Samo in 2003 and from there he led the girls’ varsity basketball team to a CIF victory using techniques that he had learned from being on the coaching staff of the Spurs. Verdugo attributes the team’s success over the years to such teaching methods.“First of all, I never let anybody say ‘I can’t’ on the team. I would say my first team raised the bar of how to be. I’ve always been able to point out their pictures on the back wall and say ‘that’s what you have to strive for—how you want to be remembered,’ and those girls are going to be remembered as people who came in and really put this program on the map,” Verdugo said.Now that the girls’ basketball season has come to a close, interviews for Verdugo’s replacement will soon take place.“They will open it up to the public for two weeks,” Marisa Silvestri, an aid to the girls’ varsity basketball team said. “I’m going to throw my head in.”After a long and successful career at Samo, Verdugo acknowledges that his departure is bittersweet. He feels that the end of this personal transformation and transformation of the girls’ basketball program is only the end of one chapter in his book.smartins@thesamohi.com