2018-19 #WCChoops Schedule | #WCChoops Champs Central | Crumpacker 2018-19 Archive

By John Crumpacker
#WCChoops Columnist

While it’s not true that if you cut Gualberto Escudero, he bleeds orange and blue, he does identify strongly with those colors.

There is perhaps no one more intimately connected to Pepperdine University than Escudero, who literally has spent – and is spending still – his entire adult life on the Malibu campus, where NCAA teams garbed in orange and blue compete. Heck, he even went to Pepperdine as a scholarship tennis player, way back when the campus was in downtown Los Angeles.

Escudero spent 37 years as the women’s tennis coach at Pepperdine before retiring in 2014, but the word “retirement’’ is misapplied to this Wave lifer. At 69, he still reports for work four days a week, teaching a PE class in tennis and stringing rackets for the men’s and women’s tennis teams.

“I’ve been getting faster,’’ he said. “I do three an hour. At the U.S. Open they string in 15 minutes.’’

With such a long and distinguished resume at Pepperdine that includes 648 career matches won and four conference Coach of the Year awards, it seemed long overdue for the university to nominate him for induction into the West Coast Conference’s Hall of Honor for 2019 in ceremonies to take place March 9 in Las Vegas.

“It always felt like going home when I went to work,’’ he said. “I felt I always had two homes. I know everybody and everybody knows me. It feels like home. It’s comfortable.’’

When Pepperdine athletics director Steve Potts called Escudero at home a few weeks ago, he was puzzled. He’s not coaching anymore. What could the AD want? To tell him about the Hall of Honor, as it turned out.

“I was surprised, of course,’’ Escudero said. “I hadn’t been aware of the Hall of Honor for the conference. I guess I’m aware of it now.’’

With Escudero for the ceremonies in Las Vegas in conjunction with the WCC basketball tournament will be his wife, Thanh Ha, sons Kevin, 30, and Egan, 26, his sister and a few close friends. While he’s honored to be nominated for the Hall, Escudero said he doesn’t particularly like the venue.

“I don’t go to Las Vegas very often anymore,’’ he said. “I don’t gamble, and I don’t like the smoke.’’

Nevertheless, he will soldier on and receive what for him amounts to a lifetime achievement award, one that began when he was 18 and a recent graduate of Hollywood High School. Escudero ran cross country in high school to build up his stamina for tennis, a strategy that served him well as a young player.

“I figured I could outrun most (tennis) players if I kept the ball in play,’’ he said.

While at Hollywood High, Escudero drew the attention of Pepperdine tennis coach John McClung, who was also a history professor on campus. McClung had to call the young player three times before setting up a tryout for Escudero against Pepperdine’s No. 2 singles player. Each won a match.

“The coach said, ‘I’ll give you a scholarship.’ I owe everything to him,’’ Escudero said.

Escudero graduated from Pepperdine in 1972, served as an assistant coach for a few years and was named head women’s tennis coach in 1977. He also served an interesting season as an assistant basketball coach on Gary Colson’s staff, not because he knew anything about basketball but to serve as a translator for a 6-foot-11 Brazilian player named Marcos Leite, who played from 1973-75.

Escudero did not speak Portuguese but fortunately for him, Leite was fluent in Spanish and the player and translator-coach could communicate.

“He understood perfectly my Spanish,’’ the tennis coach recalled. “He didn’t understand what the coach wanted him to do. He wouldn’t guard the baseline. The coach yelled at me and I yelled at him.’’

When Escudero retired in 2014, he had a career record of 648-333 and led the Waves to 31 appearances in NCAA post-season play. Three of his players would move on to professional careers and world top-30 rankings. Robin White attained a world No. 1 ranking in doubles, Roberta McCallum reached the top 20 in singles and Ginger Helgeson was a top 30 singles player. More recently, former Wave Ipek Senoglu, who competed for Pepperdine from 1998-2001, became the first Turkish women to quality for the U.S. Open.

Looking at the long arc of his career, Escudero said he was a better coach over the last decade of his tenure than he was in the first 20 years. He also looked at successful coaches across a range of sports to see how they handled their teams and athletes.

“I’m interested in what every coach in every sport does,’’ he said. “We deal with the same problems.

We deal with similar things. The biggest thing a coach needs is patience and treating individuals as individuals. As far as detecting talent, that develops over time.’’

Once he was firmly ensconced on the Malibu campus, Escudero never pursued other coaching jobs that might have come up at what are now called Power 5 schools.

“How can I ever go to another school?’’ he said. “You can’t find a better place. I’ve been through five (university) presidents and I’m about to reach number six. I’ve got staying power. It’s partly patience and the love of Pepperdine.’’