Pause and think about this for a moment: Where would the Creighton basketball programs be without the city of Bellevue?
Over the last decade alone, this southern suburb of Omaha has produced a pair of starting point guards for the men’s team, Bellevue West’s Josh Dotzler (2005-09) and Antoine Young (2008-12), and three 1,000-point scorers for women’s program. Kristi (2002-06) and Kelsey (2007-11) Woodard, also Bellevue West products, not only eclipsed 1,000 career points, but the Woodard sisters also ended their careers as the two most accurate free-throw shooters in program history. Chevelle Herring, an all-Missouri Valley Conference guard from Bellevue East, also surpassed 1,000 points during her five seasons (2005-10) on The Hilltop.
Current women’s basketball junior forward Alexis Akin-Otiko, another Bellevue West graduate, helped the Bluejays capture their first NCAA Tournament win since 1994 during their Missouri Valley Conference championship season last year. And now, with his most recent coaching hires of Herring and Matt Fritsche, women’s head coach Jim Flanery is hoping to continue the Bellevue-Bluejay success story for the foreseeable future.
Flanery has made a habit of lining his staffs with former players during his first 11 seasons as the Bluejay head man, and this season Herring joins Holly (Sivesind) Borchers, Jenny (Burns) Vickers, Kristi Woodard, Dayna Finch, and Sara Cain as staff members who have returned to their alma mater to work for the winningest coach in program history. Herring has already been a part of the Bellevue-Bluejay pipeline as a student-athlete, scoring 1,098 points during her career. This year she returns home looking to help the Jays continue the success she was a part of as a player just a few years ago.
Since graduating with a degree in public relations from Creighton in 2010, Herring has been involved in basketball locally and nationally. During the 2010-11 prep basketball season, Herring served as an assistant varsity basketball coach at Omaha Benson while working as an intern for an Omaha business. Following one season with the Bunnies, “Chevy” moved to Chicago, home of her beloved Bulls, and worked for the National Collegiate Scouting Association as a scout coordinator. Her duties at NCSA had her assisting high school student-athletes in their quest to get the attention of collegiate coaches.
A year later she returned to Nebraska as an assistant coach at Midland University in Fremont. The small NAIA school may not have been the route Herring had intended on taking in her coaching career, but it ended up proving to be a valuable experience for the 26-year-old.
“I look back and I think it would have been nice to have been a graduate assistant at an NCAA Division I program, to stay at that level, but it was a blessing that it didn’t happen that way. As an assistant coach at the NAIA level I was able to get a lot more experience with fewer restrictions than a grad assistant would have. I was able to recruit, I helped coach the guards and really had a lot of responsibility. I felt like it helped me build my resume and get experience I could not have gained as a grad assistant at a D-I school.”
In addition to her work with high school and college squads, she’s also explored the world of AAU coaching by working the Omaha Crusaders in 2011 and this past summer she led the South Dakota Attack in tournaments throughout the Midwest.
Herring talked about the appreciation she has for the level of talent she gets to work with at Creighton.
“At this level, everybody wants to work on their game, they want to talk about their game, they want to get better. It helps me appreciate coaching more, because I know the players appreciate the coaching they are receiving.”
Herring, a 2009 MVC second-team guard and 2010 MVC All-Tournament Team honoree, has enjoyed the first few months of working under her former coach as well.
“He’s so philosophical in his teachings and technical with his coaching that this is going to be a great learning experience for me.”
If you’re thinking about stopping by practice to relive Herring’s glory days of slashing, acrobatic scoop shots, she claims those days are over. Bothered by bad knees from her playing days (she red-shirted her third season on campus and played only two games as a high school senior because of knee injuries), don’t look for her to be one of those young coaches suiting up and scrimmaging with her players.
Herring remains the last Bluejay to score 30 points in a game, dropping 31 against Kansas during her junior season in 2008. Between her work with the guards this year, and the scoring ability of standout sophomore guard Marissa Janning, look for the baton to be passed from coach to player sooner rather than later.
Fritsche (rhymes with itchy) comes to Creighton following a one-year head-coaching stint at Midland University (where Herring served as his assistant). His one season in the collegiate ranks came following a decade of dominance at Bellevue West. The Maywood, Neb., native led the Thunderbirds to three state championships (2007, 2009, 2010), while posting a 199-56 record between 2002-12.
When asked to compare his experience in transitioning from high school to NAIA to NCAA Division I, Fritsche had this take:
“It’s kind of apples to oranges to pears. Midland was hard and I felt like I learned a lot last year. I feel like I’ve made another huge jump here and I have a lot to learn. We have great support here and great kids and it will be a great opportunity to improve and learn. It’s quite a jump, not just in the ability between the three levels, but in the commitment level to and from the student-athletes.”
His coaching journey began while he was still an undergraduate at Nebraska-Kearney. Fritsche transferred to UNK following one year of playing hoops at York (Neb.) College, but admittedly didn’t have what it took to compete for the Division II Lopers, so he moved to the sidelines.
“When I was at Kearney, they were nice about it, telling me ‘Hey, you’re not really any good, you’re not going to play,’ but they helped me connect with the high school team and I started coaching boys at Kearney High at that time.”
Following his work with KHS and his graduation from UNK in 1999, he came to Bellevue and served as an assistant coach at Bellevue East for three seasons before taking the head job at rival Bellevue West in 2002. In addition to his high school duties in Bellevue, he also spent summers on the AAU circuit with the Omaha Crusaders and Pinnacle Bank, working with several current and former Bluejays.
Flanery and Fritsche first met as competitors, playing in Bellevue city basketball leagues, but have a professional relationship that dates back to Flanery recruiting Fritsche’s Bellevue West talent. The relationship truly took off when Flan began recruiting the younger Woodard, Abby Henry and Brooke Delano as that talented trio was helping put Fritsche and Bellevue West on the Nebraska prep map.
Having dealt with Flanery and other collegiate coaches during the recruiting process as a high school coach, Fritsche, who already has taken recruiting trips to Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Wichita, Des Moines and Augusta, Ga., has a unique perspective on recruits as he begins looking for future Bluejays.
“One of the things I can relate to is the struggles that they’re going through and the stress the recruiting process can put on players. I feel like I can encourage recruits to ask questions and find out answers to things that they maybe were too nervous to ask or didn’t think about. It’s awesome recruiting for Creighton, because I feel like I can go places and tell people the truth and it will be something they want to hear. Creighton is an easy place to talk about.”
Herring and Fritsche each have a clear affinity for Creighton women’s basketball and as the Bluejays begin their inaugural Big East season, they are poised to help write the next chapter in the Bellevue-Bluejay success story.