Hoop Dream: Redmond's Graham Adding Coach to Basketball Résumé

Ashlyn Lutz pulls up for a three during a game of four-on-four full court. After hitting on her last two attempts, this one bounces off the rim, eliciting a grimace from Lutz.

"That's OK!" shouts Ashley Graham from the sideline. "That was the right shot!"

Graham knows a thing or two about shooting three-pointers. The 2003 graduate connected on 42 percent of long-range attempts while playing for Santa Clara University. After graduation, she began playing overseas, first Turkey, then Belgium, then Slovakia and Ukraine.

But the woman who has made her career off of her playing ability is now helping younger players from the sidelines through her summer drop-in training clinics back at Redmond High School (information for the sessions here).

"Nice skip pass!" Graham yells with the action now on the other side of the court. "Good pump fake."

Graham is far from the image of the former player now passing her skills on to the next generation. The 26-year-old, who led Redmond to the state championship game in 2001, is still very much in playing shape and awaiting the next call from a European team.

"I'm looking at going anywhere this year, wherever my agent can find a place," she said.

In the meantime, Graham is turning to something that fell in to her lap about five years ago. While playing at Santa Clara, Graham got a call from one of her mother's co-workers, who wanted to know if she was interested in working one-on-one with his fifth-grade daughter. Graham took the assignment and has continued ever since, breaking out into larger group training sessions this year.

"I didn't even know I'd be really interested in training until a dad I knew asked to train his daughter way back in college," Graham said.

Her return to the Redmond gym began with a post-tournament meeting with Redmond head coach Andre Barashkoff. After falling out of contact with the program when her former coach, Pat Bangasser, left Redmond, Graham and Barashkoff struck up a conversation about Graham helping to develop some of the area's younger players during the off-season.

"I met (Barashkoff) at one of their tournaments and kind of started working through him," Graham said. "And then some of the parents I know from some of the girls I've been training thought this would be a good opportunity just to get the girls in the gym and working with each other to help kind of build up this program here."

Graham's favorite aspect of coaching is a familiar refrain with anyone in that profession: the joy she gets from seeing a player practice something enough to master it.

"I like watching the girls improve and work on their game," she said. "Especially having girls I can see once a week and give them new things each time and see them use them in games is the best feeling, like, wow, they really picked up something. It's a cool feeling, seeing them have success with something."

Many overseas players are beginning to report to their teams, but Graham is not sure where she will be suiting up next season. In the frenetic world of European basketball, she may not know until a few days before she leaves the states and, even then, could change teams before the season is over.

Graham insists her focus is still on playing basketball. With plenty of teams in Europe looking for American talent, chances are Graham will land with one before the start of the season to continue what she's dreamed of doing since her high school days: playing professionally.

"I knew definitely in college I wasn't going to be done playing; I had to find something to continue playing," Graham said. "I don't know how much longer I'm going to play, but I still feel I'm improving as a player, so it seems I need to keep at it, at least while my body holds up." 

When Graham's playing days do come to an end, it seems safe to say she'll still have a place in the game, just from a slightly different point of view.