Eileen Roche – The puzzle pro

By Judy Richter

Like the performers in “Beach Blanket Babylon,” San Francisco’s long-running, satirical musical revue, Eileen Roche wears many hats.

As assistant athletic director and director of basketball operations for the Stanford women’s team, Eileen is in charge of scheduling games, facilities and team events. She oversees community service and fundraising. She’s the liaison to the Fast Break Club and director of summer basketball camps.

She assists the coaches when needed and this season served as assistant tournament director when Stanford hosted the first round of the NCAA tournament. Once a month she meets with the administrators from all the other Stanford sports.

Coming up with the schedule

Nowadays, the hat she wears most often is her game-scheduling hat. She’s trying to line up next fall’s schedule, but doing so is a challenge akin to assembling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle or solving a super-hard Sudoku puzzle.

She has most of the pieces, but as of early May, she was looking for one more team to fill either a home slot in November or a home or local away slot in December. Once she finds one, she might have to make adjustments elsewhere to fit everyone in.

Even after she thinks she has all the pieces in place, she can’t publish the schedule until all contracts are signed. Luckily, she’s about to begin her sixth season in the job, so she feels confident that everything will work out. “It takes a great deal of patience, and you can’t panic,” she said during an interview in her office.

Lining up games can begin years in advance. Right now Eileen has a thick notebook filled with possibilities and contracts through 2013. That’s where she starts the process, looking at the contracts involving home and home games (they play here, we play there) and one-time games.

She considers several factors when looking beyond commitments. “Tara and I work (together) daily. … We want top 25 teams,” she said, referring to head coach Tara VanDerveer’s goal of playing the toughest pre-conference games possible to prepare her team for the caliber of competition it’ll face in the NCAA tournament.

Another goal is to play an away game within the vicinity of every player’s home at least once during her four years at Stanford. At the same time, Eileen tries to schedule at least one more opponent that’s reasonably close geographically on the road trip.

Likewise, Eastern and Midwestern teams journeying to Stanford want to schedule a team that’s fairly close, but that involves finding one that has both the desire and the time slot.

There’s another complication. “It’s tough to get teams to play (Stanford). They don’t want to lose,” she said. Maybe a team is too young to face the likes of the Cardinal, or maybe a coach is afraid that too many losses, despite the level of competition, could get her fired. Likewise, another Western team might not want to host an elite team that’s visiting Stanford.

Luckily the Pac-10 season, which starts just before or after the new year, is a given with flexibility mainly in game times. Usually the first game of the week is Thursday night. Stanford prefers playing the weekend game on Saturday to give players a much-needed day off to rest and focus on class work Sunday. The second preference is a 2 p.m. Sunday game, especially if it’s at home.

How the NCAA influences schedules

NCAA rules play a major role in scheduling. A team can’t start regular practices before 5 p.m. on the Friday closest to Oct. 15. Before that, coaches can supervise team conditioning or physical fitness activities for no more than eight hours a week after the start of the academic year. This year it starts Sept. 20 at Stanford.

Because Stanford is on a quarter system, its classes start later than most semester system classes. Then, because of the required interval between the start of classes and the two allowed exhibition games against non-Division I teams, Stanford’s exhibitions must be scheduled between Nov. 1 and the second Friday in November, when regular games may begin.

A team may play a maximum of 11 nonconference games -- nine if it’s in a multi-team tournament (Stanford isn’t in one this year) -- until its conference season starts. Here’s another issue – Stanford doesn’t play during the week before exams and exam week itself. This year, that time off is Nov. 29-Dec. 10.

All of this adds up to a tight time frame for 11 games, especially since Stanford prefers at least five or six of them to be at home. “It’s a huge puzzle to put together,” Eileen said.

One of the places where she’s looking for one more game this fall is website Basketball Travelers, Inc. It allows teams to advertise schedule openings, say what they might offer visitors in the way of money and hotel rooms, and list contact information.

She has posted Stanford’s opening and checks the site several times a day to see if anything new catches her eye. She also sends out hundreds of e-mails during the scheduling process. Both she and the coaches do a lot of networking, too.

Looking ahead to hoops camp

In addition to her current focus on scheduling, she’s getting things squared away for the four sessions of Tara Hoops Summer Camp in June and July. This popular event attracted about 600 girls last summer. One corner of her office is devoted to the camp with a separate desk, computer and phone. Her camp director duties started late last fall when she secured the dates and facilities and updated the Tara Hoops website.

She arranges for all of the equipment and supplies and hires staff, including trainers and counselors. The goal is to have at least one staff member for every 10 campers. Staff members include some current Stanford players.

After the last session of hoops camp, she can take off in August, which the NCAA designates as a dead period with no recruiting or other activities.

Plunging into the season

Once the season starts, she has other responsibilities, including the weekly FBC newsletter and any flyers for the FBC table before home games. If the team is at home, her work day starts about 9 or 10 a.m., when she greets the visiting team and makes sure they know where everything is. The visitors arrange for their own meals.

Even before they arrive, Eileen has prepared them for their visit. In early September she sends them a packet of information about hotels, restaurants, parking, etc. They request practice times, so she coordinates their needs with those of her own team as well as the men’s basketball and women’s volleyball teams, which share facilities with WBB.

Later on game day, if there’s a pre-game chalk talk by Stanford’s scouting coach, Eileen arranges for the necessary equipment at Kissick and starts the scouting tape 45 minutes before tipoff. She also makes sure that either Kissick or Dallmar is ready for the post-game FBC gathering. She and associate head coach Amy Tucker work together in lining up a speaker, if any.

Her next stop is Maples, where she meets with the ball girls for that game. Usually they’re girls who were at hoops camp or who won the chance to serve as ball girls at a school auction. She explains their duties and gives them their T-shirts and mops.

After meeting the game officials and giving them their paychecks, she’s free to watch the game. Assuming Stanford wins – going back to 2008-09, it has a 46-game win streak at Maples – she has the pleasure of opening a bag of 50 victory balls provided by the marketing department. The players love the tradition of tossing them to the fans, she said.

Then it’s off to the post-game event, where she usually speaks for a few minutes before the speaker or a coach arrives. She stays until everyone except the custodial staff has left. “I’ll be the last one out,” she said.

Then it’s home to her son Christian, 17, a junior at St. Francis High School in Mountain View. Her other son, Conor, 21, is a junior at the University of Oregon. The other two members of her household are Ace and Nike, her fluffy white, 10-pound Maltese dogs.

Both of her sons play water polo and other sports. During the summer, they work at hoops camp and often play pickup basketball games with members of the Stanford women’s team who happen to be on campus.

Eileen travels with the team post season. Her duties include making all road trip facility arrangements such as game day shoot times and practice times, which take place at the host school or other facilities near the team’s hotel. She also works closely with office administrator DeeDee Zawaydeh, who handles the details of transportation, lodging and menus in the team’s hotel (healthful food only), along with the travel itinerary.

Background in basketball

Born in Brooklyn, Eileen grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan. She was an assistant basketball coach at Virginia Tech for a year before serving in a similar capacity from 1982 to 1985 at Stanford. (Tara arrived in 1985.) She then became head coach at West Valley Community College for a year.

Before returning to Stanford in her present capacity in 2005, she was event coordinator and championship director for the California Interscholastic Federation’s Central Coast Section High School Athletic Championships in basketball and volleyball.

“The most enjoyable aspect of my job is working with this incredible staff,” Eileen wrote in an e-mail following her interview. “Tara is brilliant! A consummate professional. A master of game strategy. Simply the best!

“Amy is an outstanding recruiter, has great knowledge and experience combined with being a dynamic teacher,” she wrote.

Assistant coaches “Kate (Paye) and Bobbie (Kelsey) have created a dimension of alumnae pride, laser-focused determination with gut-wrenching laughter mixed in. Their game preparation is phenomenal,” she continued.

“…This highly successful staff combination speaks for itself. Everyone works incredibly hard with one goal in mind: the skillful, progressive cultivation of a team capable of winning a national championship.

“I enjoy my role as the background administrator to this incredible program and having the opportunity to interact with this staff, the team and all the wonderful fans I have met in the past five years on my second tour on this staff,” she concluded.

No wonder all of Eileen’s hats suit her so well. She’s part of a great cast of professionals who know what they’re doing, where they’re going and why. No wonder the fans can sit back, enjoy the show and applaud mightily.