Success Is More Than Winning

Welcome to Ventura College, Coach Greg Winslow. We wish you well in rebuilding a basketball program that was once the pride of the county. Please be sure you put as much energy into following the rules, building character and teaching sportsmanship as you do into recruiting players and winning games.

The heady highs and heartbreaking lows of the Pirates basketball program in the past four years have been as dramatic as any cliffhanger playoff game. Ventura College won three state championships within 11 years, climaxed by back-to-back titles in 1995 and 1996, in part by attracting players from as far away as New York and Chicago.

Then came a series of recruiting violations, including providing players with money, free or reduced-rate meals and access to campus telephones, facilities and vehicles. The coach from that era was sent packing, and two hired in turn to replace him each quit before running a single play. In November 1997 the Pirates were placed on probation for two years and banned from postseason play by the Western State Conference. In frustration, college officials benched the whole program.

Now, with the suspension behind it, the college has hired a promising new coach to focus on the future. In his two years at San Bernardino Valley College, Winslow improved the won-lost record from 4-19 to 19-14 to 25-8.

“His skills as a coach, his aspirations for our program and his charismatic approach in working with our faculty and community will, over time, allow Ventura basketball to be successful again,” Dick James, Ventura College athletic director, told The Times.

A 1982 graduate of Buena High married to a Ventura High graduate, Winslow, 35, has already begun rebuilding. He says a combination of local and out-of-state players is necessary for long-term success but that his first priority is to recruit close to home. He is visiting local high school campuses.

We offer Coach Winslow best wishes as he sets out to rebuild a men’s basketball program as good as the school’s women’s program--which this year came within two points of winning the state championship. But we remind all of the coaches who guide Ventura County’s young athletes that winning is only part of the game plan. The even greater goal is to teaching young men and women to do their best, work hard, work together--and follow the rules.