Meet the newest Timberwolves

Clovis East High School has two new coaches on campus.

Haley White brings 14 years of experience to her position as director of sport for women’s basketball, while Bryce Kamimoto, last year’s North Yosemite League Coach of the Year, brings a lot of ambition as director of sport for women’s softball.

Haley White — Women’s Basketball

White teaches five periods of freshman and sophomore physical education at Clovis East, and is excited to launch basketball practice on Nov. 2.

White moved her family from Quincy, with a population of about 5,000, to Clovis in mid-September. Her husband of 10 years, Josh White, is also a P.E. teacher and coaches football. They are excited for their son, Nathan, 6, and daughter Taylor, 3, to attend Clovis schools and have more athletic opportunities than they did in the small, isolated town of Quincy.

“I want to raise my family here. We’re going to be here awhile,” White said. “This was the next step for us to improve our quality of family life.”

White, who coached at the junior college level for eight years, is looking forward to getting to know student-athletes for longer than two years.

“The expectations here are to run a program like an elite program,” she said. “I get the girls for four years or longer. Being the director of sport, I’ll start influencing their basketball careers and lives starting in fourth grade, and that’s very amazing and unique.”

Practice doesn’t begin until next month, but White has open gym and clinics planned two nights a week this month.

“We’re going to hit the ground running and have a first-class program,” she said. “We’re going to work hard and get better everyday. These girls are workers, they are excited, they want to play and they want to win.”

Her goal for the team is to be competitive no matter who they’re playing.

“We’re going to compete for the entire length of the game. We’re going to work on limiting turnovers and doing the little things that we can control, like boxing out and rebounding. The Valley is a competitive, physical conference, so we’re going to match everyone’s physicality and intensity.”

White plans to introduce her varsity players to girls at the seven elementary schools that feed into Clovis East beginning in fourth grade to get them excited about playing the sport and invite them to games and clinics.

White wants to instill a sense of responsibility into her athletes.

“We’re going to be good citizens whether we’re in the community, in classes,” she said. “If you have a Clovis East women’s basketball shirt on, you’re marketing our program, and so we’re going to have kids that are responsible. I’m trying to make these girls well-rounded people.

“They’ll work hard when they know that I’m invested in them. I like to get to know them personally and give them something forward to everyday, knowing that ‘hey, coach cares.’

“At the end of the day I want to surround myself with good girls who are excited about basketball. If I’m going to be away from my family to be with them, then that’s what I want.”

Bryce Kamimoto — Women’s softball

Kamimoto’s experience comes from two winning programs. He coached JV and varsity softball at Central High School, where he graduated from in 2010, for three and a half years under head coach Scott Gorton. In February, Kamimoto took over the softball program at Sunnyside High School.

“We won both Valley championships at Central, and at Sunnyside we won the first outright league title for softball school history and I was named NYL Coach of the Year,” he said.

Kamimoto earned his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology at Fresno State — where he was the mascot, Timeout, for two and a half years — and is working on his master’s degree and teaching credential through National University.

He works at Clovis East as a campus monitor.

“What drew me into Clovis Unified are the systems they have in place and the amount of detail they put into sticking with their systems,” Kamimoto said. “Also what drew me in are the hires that have been in the athletics program here at Clovis East, with (men’s basketball) Coach (Adrian) Wiggins and (men’s baseball) Coach (Pat) Waer coming on.”

A four-week Fall Ball season has commenced, and Kamimoto hopes to use it as an opportunity to see how the girls play.

“The scrimmages help us when we go into a tryout process we have a better idea of what the girls are about and what they bring to the table,” he said.

The softball season starts in mid-February, and this year Kamimoto’s goal is for the team to become competitive in the league.

“This program has had talent, but it hasn’t competed at a track level for a long time,” he said. “We need to get back into position to compete in every game, start to finish, and put ourselves in a position to win every game.”

His vision is to create a system in the Clovis East area where girls learn the fundamentals of softball in elementary school and then progress to focusing on details and their task on any given pitch.

“Once they get to the high school level, I want them to apply what they’ve learned, but in a highly competitive manner,” he said. “We just increase the expectations, competitiveness and amount of detail on what goes on out here.”

Kamimoto grew up in “a baseball family.” His sister, Maryssa, is four years younger than him and he helped his father coach her teams when she played travel ball.

“In high school I played baseball but I got hurt, so my time on the field was spent coaching more than anything else. After I graduated high school, my P.E. teacher was, and is, the head softball coach at Central and he gave me the opportunity to coach in his program.”

Kamimoto’s motto, based on the University of Oregon’s “win the day,” is “win the pitch.” “It’s more softball geared, but the girls can apply it in any aspect in their life,” he said. “We have to be able to live in the moment and take advantage of opportunities given to us in the moment. We can think about the future as much as we want, but if we’re not doing our job or not taking advantage of what’s offered to us right now, the future is going to change.

“Having a focus on what’s going on right now helps us not only stay focused on the field, but also stay focused on what’s going on in the classroom — being able to figure out what’s being taught ... to get the most effective education as possible.

“You have to be able to capitalize on any opportunity you have to better yourself and put yourself in the best position you possibly can.”

This story was originally published October 2, 2015 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Meet the newest Timberwolves."