'Never Thought That She Couldn't'

Growing up on the family farm in Mason, Heather Oesterle thought she might one day be a farmer.

She was, at one time, a big Michigan State basketball fan, her favorite player the legendary Steve Smith. Then she became a Michigan Wolverine before jump-stopping her way up the coaching ladder with stops at Stanford, Northern Illinois and Miami (Ohio).

She found her place, and it wasn't far, relatively speaking, from where she grew up. She came to Central Michigan as an assistant coach under Sue Guevara a decade ago, when Guevara was in the lay-the-foundation stages of the CMU women's basketball program that would eventually become the premier program in the Mid-American American Conference.

Through the travels, the changing aspirations, and the growth, Heather Oesterle matured, but she never changed. The competitiveness, the work ethic, and the love of the game were woven into her DNA and are as evident today as they were back in the day, when she played barnyard basketball with her dad and her sisters.

"Good things happen to good people that work their tails off," Oesterle says of a message delivered to her in writing by her AAU coach and family friend Bill McCullen. "I hung that over my bed and I would look at that every day. I thought, 'That's what I want to do. I want to be a good person that works their tail off.'"

Two weeks ago, Oesterle's Chippewas clinched their fourth-consecutive Mid-American Conference overall regular-season championship. On Tuesday, Oesterle was named the MAC Coach of the Year.

Long-Term Goal
Heather Oesterle has the keys now. She spent nine years as an assistant to Guevera at CMU, the final seven of which her nameplate carried the title "associate head coach."

Surely during that near decade that Oesterle worked under Guevara – who had coached Oesterle as a player at Michigan from 1998-2002 – Oesterle's phone rang, the athletic director of any number of colleges and universities on the other end, chatting up Oesterle to gauge her interest in leaving Central Michigan for what some might deem greener pastures.

But the grass isn't always greener. And the goal for Oesterle wasn't a head-coaching job, but the right head-coaching job.

Patience and pragmatism are ingrained tenants of perseverance. Those traits, like the love of basketball and remarkable work ethic, were passed down from one generation to the next in the Oesterle household, just as the CMU women's basketball program has been passed down from player to player, coach to coach.

Heather Oesterle had tilled the soil, planted the seeds and cultivated the Chippewa crops under and alongside Guevara for nearly a decade. Today, it's her farm, and it's her call.

Her Chippewa team has displayed an uncanny knack for fourth-quarter comebacks and for going on late-game spurts in ringing up victory after victory.

The only way a team consistently does that is with poise and confidence. Those ultra-important factors are bread from experience, of course, but also from an X factor that can be difficult to define.

"This team," Oesterle has said myriad times after a close victory, "just doesn't panic."

Planting the Seeds
The foundation was built, the seeds planted, decades ago for Oesterle and her sisters, Jen and Sandy, both of whom were standout high school players in their own right. They cut their basketball teeth under the watchful eye of their father, Brian.

"We used to have some heated two-on-two games," Heather Oesterle says. "It was always my older sister Jen and me on one team. My Dad and my younger sister Sandy on the other team.

"The rule was we couldn't block Sandy's shots. My dad would get really mad because we'd still do it. The competitiveness between us …"

Farming was the lifeblood of the family, and basketball the diversion that became the focal point. Brian, his three brothers and a nephew continue to work the family's 4,000 acres, started in the 1950 by the family patriarch, Lyle Oesterle. Heather's mother, Janet, was a long-time teacher's aid with the Mason schools. The educational aspect was every bit as important to the family as was farming and basketball.

Heather did her share of work as did all of the kids. It wasn't a request, it wasn't a demand. It was simply an expectation. Not unlike the way Oesterle, 40, works with her players on the CMU women's basketball team today.

"She used to mow lawns and she was very fussy about straight lines and trimming," said Brian, who played junior varsity basketball at CMU in the 1970s. "She's very fussy about how she does things."

Then, there was basketball. Good old-fashioned hard work followed by good old-fashioned hard play. Summer, spring, winter, fall. Stifling heat, freezing cold.

"In the barn there were bulls and if the ball bounced in the bullpen they had to go in and get the ball," Brian said. "And then they had to wash off."

Wash it off and keep playing. Shake off a jammed finger, a rolled ankle, and keep playing. A bad stretch in the game, a bad quarter? Keep playing. Down late in the game? Keep playing.

"She would even get upset if we went on family vacations because it would cut into her basketball time," Brian said. "We had to take a basketball with us and find a court wherever we went."

She kept playing, right through a standout AAU career with the Capital City Express and then at Mason High School, where she left as the school's all-time leading scorer. Then onto a four-year career at Michigan.

By the time Heather Oesterle was well into her playing career at Michigan, she knew coaching was her calling, not farming. Yet she would still be planting and harvesting.

"With my dad, he's calling me pretty much every other day and making sure I get stuff done," Heather says. "So that's our joke, 'Alright I'm working harder than you're working.'

"I'm still at work sometimes when I call him and he's still harvesting or whatever. My dad was my hero growing up, he was a great role model for me, and I knew that if I worked really hard at the game of basketball I could go wherever I wanted to go in college and it was always a goal of mine.

"Sometimes, I think I wasn't blessed with the most athleticism, but I worked my butt off to get there, and that's all I've ever wanted to do, to be a good person who works really hard."

Taking Over
It had been Oesterle's goal to one day be a head coach. When she left the Michigan to become a volunteer assistant at Stanford in 2002, she knew it would take time to get to where she wanted to be.

It doesn't happen overnight, just as the crops don't grow the day the seeds are planted. The roots extend and take hold first, and the elements have to cooperate. Right place at the right time? Certainly, but it isn't happenstance. It's about planning and pragmatism.

Guevara saw something in Oesterle first as a recruit, then as a player, and then as a coach. Oesterle didn't hitch her wagon to Guevara's tractor, she helped build it and maintain it.

Now she's driving.

Oesterle became emotional last summer during the press conference when she was introduced as Guevara's successor. Tears of joy over a goal – a dream – realized. The affable Guevara, everybody's buddy, handing over the reins, smiling all the way that she had left the program at its pinnacle and in the very capable hands of her protégé.

All the eyes – and the hopes – were on Oesterle then, and now.

In all those games that go down to the wire, the players look to their coach who never seems fazed, not by a two-point deficit with 10 seconds to play, and not by a high bar of expectations set by her predecessor, mentor and friend.

Nor by the expectation set down decades ago on the family farm. Hard work, integrity, honesty.

"If you were watching her play you wouldn't know if the team was up big, down big, tied," says Bill McCullen, her AAU coach. "She played with the same intensity level at all times. I think that's a reflection of her dad. Her dad's an extremely hard worker and she comes from a very disciplined farming family."

You go in the bullpen, get the ball, wash it off, and keep playing. You get up every morning and you go to work, be it on the farm or in the gym. This is who Heather Oesterle is, this is what she is, this is where she is.

This is Central Michigan women's basketball.

"She's always been very determined," Brian Oesterle says. "She set goals for herself – always goal-oriented -- and she works at getting there. Never thought that she couldn't."

Central Michigan University Athletics

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