Hansen's Notebook: 767 sport seasons later, Pac-12's 46-year run of conference play ends next week

The Star's longtime columnist on UA baseball coach Chip Hale's run to Pac-12 player-coach history, big-time coaching changes at Catalina Foothills and Salpointe Catholic high schools, how T.J. McConnell's NBA ride just keeps rolling on and more.

UA's Hale in position to be first in Pac-12 history to win player and coach of year

If you’re looking for an irresistible ending to Pac-12 sports history, it would be coach Chip Hale’s Arizona Wildcats holding off Utah and Oregon State to win the 2024 baseball championship next weekend.

The Pac-12’s final conference championship, title No. 767 overall in the men’s and women’s sports played by Arizona from 1978-2024, is likely to be decided at Hi Corbett Field and here’s the hook:

Hale is clearly the co-leader with Utah’s Gary Henderson to become the Pac-12 coach of the year, guiding a young team picked No. 9 in the conference's preseason poll to a two-game lead over the Utes entering Sunday's game in Salt Lake City, with Oregon State lurking as well.

If Hale is indeed the league’s coach of the year, he will become the only person — man or woman — to be a Pac-10/12 coach of the year and a player of the year in 46 years, or 767 conference finishes.

How would that be for a final bow?

In 1987, Hale was the Pac-10 co-player of the year with UCLA’s Torey Lovullo, now the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks; Hale was the Diamondbacks' skipper in 2015-16, with Luvullo taking that role in 2017.

Hale hit .405 with 11 homers and 45 RBIs, a lead-off hitting third baseman for the ’87 Wildcats.

Hale is one of 74 Wildcats honored as Pac-10/12 Player of the Year across those 46 seasons. It’s an exclusive class that is led by six-time honoree Amy Skieresz (track and cross country, 1995-98), distance runner Robert Cheseret, five times the POY, 2004-07, and swimmer Ryk Neethling, who was a four-time Pac-10 swimmer of the year, 1997-2000.

After this weekend’s Pac-12 track and field championship is completed in Colorado, the baseball title will be the final championship in league history. (Pause here to dab a tear from your eye). Of the 767 championships, the clear winner is Stanford. No surprise there.

Of the sports Arizona played over those years, Stanford has won 241 conference championships. That’s astonishing. Almost a third of every Pac-10/12 title was won by the Cardinal.

Stanford dominated many of the sports that either used to or still do receive little national attention: 33 in men’s swimming, 30 in women’s tennis, 26 in women’s basketball and 25 in women’s swimming. After Stanford, the leaders go this way:

• UCLA, 144 titles

• Oregon, 79

• USC, 74

• Arizona, 64

• ASU, 45

• Washington State is last with six titles.

A few additional observations: (A) the Sun Devils won 13 men’s golf titles, its most. Arizona was led by 17 men’s basketball championships (thanks, Lute). ... (B) Arizona did not win a championship in gymnastics, beach volleyball, men’s and women’s track and field and women’s tennis; it is forever listed in official league records as a tri-champ of the 1993 football season, albeit no Rose Bowl berth. ... (C) All of these records include ties, but they do not include the old Pac-10 North Division of baseball, which involved non-Pac-10 schools.

My choice as Pac-10/12 coach of the 46 years: Oregon State’s Pat Casey, who somehow coached a team with no previous history of national success — a baseball team in the rain belt, of all things — to three College World Series championships and five Pac-12 championships from 2005-17.

My vote for the Pac-10/12 best team from 1978-2024: Arizona’s 2001 softball team, 65-4, with pitcher Jennie Finch going 32-0, and the UA placing four players on the All-American first team.

My choice as Pac-10/12 athlete of the 46 seasons: ASU golfer Phil Mickelson, who won the NCAA championship in 1989, 1990 and 1992, the only man since Ben Crenshaw in 1972 to win three national championships, also leading the Sun Devils to the 1989 and 1990 NCAA titles.

Bloomberg’s run at Foothills among the best

At one point in Jeff Bloomberg’s extraordinary tennis coaching career at Catalina Foothills High School, the Falcons went 114-1. But that wasn’t the most important number. It was 7-0; Bloomberg’s boys teams won seven consecutive state championships.

But the numbers lost much of their meaning last November when Bloomberg suffered a heart attack while on a long bike ride with his wife. Fortunately, Donna Bloomberg is a former cardiac nurse who helped treat her husband and get him to the hospital in time to save his life.

When Bloomberg decided to return for his eighth season at CFHS, his club went 12-2 and lost in the state finals to Chandler's Arizona College Prep. He chose to retire from coaching, ending his days as Foothills coach with a 126-3 record and seven state titles.

“Losing in the championship match kind of made me second guess myself,’’ said Bloomberg, a retired attorney who is in the South Dakota Tennis Hall of Fame as a coach and administrator. “But I finally came to the conclusion that it’s time to move on. I enjoyed every minute of those nine seasons. I’m so proud of the boys. Someone’s going to inherit a great team next year.’’

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Urbanski’s success leads to 10 state championships

Mike Urbanski is an assistant principal at Salpointe Catholic High School who began his distinguished teaching and administrative career in 1973 at Green Fields Country Day School.

Over the last eight years, Urbanski has added a new and impressive dimension to his résumé: he has coached Salpointe to 10 state championships in track and field and cross country, becoming just the eighth person in Tucson history to coach 10 state championship teams.

Much like Foothills' Bloomberg, Urbanski is also retiring from coaching. "I want to spend more time with my family,'' he says.

It was a memorable finish; Urbanski’s Lancers swept the boys and girls state championships last week in Phoenix, just as they did in 2023. His run of 10 state titles began with the 2016 girls state cross country title.

Among the highlights of Salpointe’s title sweep last year were state titles in the shot put and discus won by senior Keona Davis (formerly Wilhite), a 4-star football lineman who will play at Nebraska in the fall. Davis competed for Urbanski’s team for the first time, and it was the right time. Arizona’s five-time NCAA shot put/discus champion Jordan Geist became an assistant coach for the Lancers.

“Keona is an amazing and coachable athlete,’’ said Urbanski. “He picked up two very technical events quickly enough to become a state champion.’’

Urbanski also coached Maddie Martinez, who became a multiple state champion in the long jump and triple jump and finished second at 200 meters. The sister of former CDO, Stanford and New York Giants/Green Bay Packers linebacker Blake Martinez, Maddie accepted a scholarship offer to compete for Ole Miss next year.

Short stuff: McConnell worth eight figures; Tucson High's Zepeda wows for Pima softball

• Arizona’s newest men’s basketball transfer, Anthony Dell’Orso from Campbell University, comes from a program that lost last season to Idaho State, NC-Central, Drexel, Delaware and Monmouth. It will be a significant step up for Dell'Orso to play in the Big 12 against four potential 2025 Final Four teams: Kansas, Iowa State, Houston and Baylor. It’s difficult to evaluate or predict how he will do against better competition. But Dell'Orso made 38% of his 3-pointers, which is like a baseball player hitting .300. Arizona has needed a reliable, go-to 3-point shooter since Salim Stoudamire shot 50.4% in 2005. Caleb Love attempted an Arizona record 277 3-pointers last season but only made 33%. ...

• Trevor Werbylo, a Salpointe and UA grad who was an All-Pac-12 golfer in 2022, won the U.S, Open local qualifier at Sewailo Golf Course last week with a bogey-free 66. Only three of 74 golfers qualified. Werbylo now advances to the U.S. Open sectional qualifying next week. He is joined by fellow Tucsonan Reece Nilsen, a Catalina Foothills state champion (2016) who advanced out of the Phoenix local qualifier a week earlier. Nilsen is now an assistant coach at UTEP. Werbylo is ranked No. 61 on the money list ($40,698) in Korn Ferry Tour statistics this year. ...

• Pima College second baseman Camila Zepeda of Tucson High School is the first Aztec non-pitcher since Flowing Wells’ Ashley Monceaux in 2004 to be the ACCAC player of the year. Zepeda went from six home runs last year to 16 and raised her batting average from .360 to .488. She only struck out 11 times in 174 at-bats and stole 14 bases without being thrown out. Wow. ...

• Arizona’s 2014 all-conference point guard T.J. McConnell, an NBA super sub among super subs, is being paid $8.1 million by the Indiana Pacers this year. His contract runs through 2025, with a raise to $10 million next year. There will be a waiting line for him to become a head coach, college or NBA, as soon as he retires. He is 32.

My two cents: Common theme in departures of successful Salpointe coaches

See if you can find a common theme in these surprising departures of highly successful Salpointe head coaches:

• 2003: Boys basketball coach Brian Peabody wasn’t offered a contract for the 2004 season even though he had gone 241-59 with two state championship game appearances. “I was blindsided,’’ Peabody, now Pima Community College's championship-winning men's coach, told me. “The parents forced me out.’’

• 2013: Volleyball coach Amy Johnson wasn’t offered a contract after the 2013 season even though she had gone 207-125 in six years. “It was a parental issue,’’ Johnson told me.

• 2024: Girls volleyball coach Heather Moore-Martin, a 10-time state champion (eight at Salpointe since 2014), wasn’t asked to return for the 2024-25 season. She submitted a letter of resignation on Thursday, a week after winning another state title.

This happened five months after Salpointe football coach Eric Rogers was not invited to return for a fifth season, even though he had coached the Lancers to a 35-12 record while making an unprecedented step up to play in the wickedly difficult Class 6A.

In a way, the Lancers are the New York Yankees of Tucson prep sports. They rule. They have financial resources TUSD schools and Southern Arizona opponents cannot hope to match. They’ve won an incredible 23 state championships in the 2020s in softball, boys and girls track, girls volleyball, beach volleyball, baseball, boys and girls basketball, boys and girls cross country, boys and girls softball.

There’s never been anything to match this rate of success in 100 years of Tucson prep sports, not even when Tucson High was the only high school in town from 1910-45.

Moore-Martin took the high road when asked why she wrote a letter of resignation. She chose not to publicly criticize the Salpointe administration and parental issues.

“Luckily, I got ahead of this and I’ve been able to move my summer volleyball camp from Salpointe to the Sporting Chance gymnasium,’’ she said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll take a break and see what happens.’’

High school sports in 2024 are almost unrecognizable from 20 years ago. Open enrollment is the high school equivalent of college’s transfer portal. Year-round training in one sport and highly expensive travel teams have become the prescribed avenue to get playing time.

The pressure to win has never been greater. Parents have become like college sports donors who help to fund school athletic programs. Unhappy parents can and do force change, as has been shown at Salpointe.

If I could see my 1970s high school coaches today, I’d give them a big hug and thank them for making the prep sports experience so rewarding and memorable. Today’s high school sports don’t seem huggable at all.