Jaci Clark was not like the little girl that grew up next door. When Christmas rolled around every year, she wouldn’t sit on Santa’s lap and ask for a new Barbie doll. She might have asked for an Easy Bake oven, but not for the reason that you think. There are several words that I can think of to describe Jaci, but the first one that comes to mind is ‘competitor’. You see, had Jaci gotten that Easy Bake oven, she would have entered a cooking contest just to see if she could win.

Jaci grew up in a very close family with an older brother and three younger sisters. It was the combination of this atmosphere and the competitive beliefs of her father that made Jaci what she is today.

“My dad has always been very competitive,” Clark says. “There was always a challenge, be it racquetball or running or whatever. There was an argument every night after dinner as to who was going to do the dishes. We couldn’t work it out together so my dad came up with a plan that would allow us to ‘roll for it.’ He would get the dice out and we would see who would lose. Everybody would cheer and give high fives. It turned a chore into something that ended up being fun.”

The fact that the family was athletically inclined seemed to make the level of competition even greater as Clark further explains. “My sisters played different sports in high school and one played softball and another played volleyball in college. We were competitive in everything that we did. We would sit at the dinner table and see who was going to get the biggest piece of meat.”

Competition and the ensuing sports activities were always important in the Clark household, but they certainly did not take a back seat to the educational experience. From the time that they were able to work, Jaci and her siblings were all required to save half of everything they earned as part of their college fund. “The importance of a college education was instilled in me at an early age,” she says. “With there being four of us girls, it was very important, especially — for my mom — that we were all on a level playing field.” Education and being an educator would follow Jaci through life.

Clark played several sports but really began to excel in volleyball and basketball while in high school. She had several options with respect to her college, but decided to stay close to home and attended the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and excelled in both sports. She was an NAIA All-American in both basketball and volleyball. Jaci is still UWM’s all-time leading scorer (1,830 points) and rebounder (1,226). In 1993, UWM made her the first athlete to have his or her number retired.

She graduated in 1984 with a BS in Education, but it was now time to start making real decisions. Opportunities in women’s pro basketball were not quite as lucrative then as they are now. Europe was an option, but coaching was beginning to creep into Clark’s blood. It was difficult to give up the game as an athlete, but another love — teaching — was moving to the forefront. She realized that coaching would allow her to live in both worlds.

“I would probably have gone into teaching or business if it were not for sports,” Clark explains. “I think coaching is teaching and development and I love that aspect of it. I also enjoy the competitiveness of sports. Business probably would have attracted me in that way. I might have been torn between the two, but coaching gives me the opportunity to enjoy both.”

Because she had superior abilities in two sports, there were decisions to be made concerning which direction to take. “When it came time for me to work on my Masters Degree, I needed to chose between basketball and volleyball. I felt at the time that basketball was going to be the sport that athletic departments were going to highlight. I liked both sports but I was intrigued with the strategies involved in basketball. I could see that the opportunities in being a coach were better in basketball.”

After one year as a volunteer assistant coach at her alma mater, an opportunity as a graduate assistant at Indiana became available. The following year, she moved on to Bowling Green State University as a full time assistant. Five years later she found herself with the opportunity of a lifetime. In mid-October, the day before the start of practice, she was named head coach at BGSU.

“I got the job on October 14th and I had to be ready to go on October 15th, so I really didn’t have a lot of time to think about it,” she reflects. “I felt that I was ready. It is one thing for people to tell you that you are ready, it is another to actually know you are. It was a good situation for me because I went from being an assistant coach to being the head coach. I really had a good grasp on the other part of the job. If I needed something administratively, I knew where to go. I knew all of those people. And I knew the kids, I had recruited all of them. I felt that I had prepared myself well to be a teacher and be ready to teach the things that I wanted to project to our team.”

She didn’t have a great deal of time to prepare and she realized that she would make mistakes, but a good teacher has to be a good student, too. “Have I changed from that first day? Absolutely! When I look back on myself at that time, I have to laugh. Thank God that I had the players that I did. It taught me a lot of things. It taught me that it is important to have great talent but it also taught me that it is just as important to have quality people. They had to believe in me and trust what I was doing.”

It didn’t take Jaci long to make a name for herself. In her very first game as a head coach, her Falcons upset Purdue, who had made it to the Final Four the previous year and was rated in the Top-10 in most preseason publications. She wouldn’t stop there. BG went on to compile a 24-5 record that first year. The following year, the Falcons improved to 25-5 and became the first MAC team ever to be ranked in the Top-25. After two NCAAs and one WNIT appearance, several Coach of the Year awards, and a listing in the 1994 Lindy’s Up and Coming Coaches, she decided that there were bigger fish to fry.

The University of Dayton had been struggling for years in both women’s and men’s basketball. Oliver Purnell had been hired at the same time as Clemette Haskins. The men’s program was beginning to show the improvement that everyone had expected from Purnell. The women, however, continued to struggle. Haskins, with possibly a little help from the administration, decided that the program was not headed in the direction that she had envisioned. The parting of the ways was regrettable, but needed. UD needed a coach that could turn things around and had been successful in the past. Jaci Clark immediately came to mind and it wasn’t long before Ted Kissell was introducing her to the media at the Arena.

TOMORROW: Part II, the final part of this series that brings readers up to present day basketball with Jaci Clark and the Flyers.