Legendary New Jersey coach Jeff Jasper reaches 1,000 wins

The girls on Pascack Valley’s first team had had few opportunities to participate in organized sports, said Kathy Barton ’75, a starter that season. The opportunities that they did have were not too competitive.

Jasper offered something different.

“This was the first experience that I would say was probably more like a boys’ sport,” Barton said. “Jeff brought the intensity and the passion and the discipline to a girls sport that the boys’ sports had.”

Jasper ran tough practices. He had high expectations. He yelled.

And the girls loved it, Barton said.

“He brought something out of us that hadn’t been done before,” she said. “It was really exciting.”

Jasper had actually planned to switch to boys basketball after one season. Pascack Valley’s athletic director at the time had told him that if he led the girls team for a year, he could coach boys junior varsity after that.

After three practices, Jasper decided to stay with the girls.

“I loved the fact that they were so enthusiastic, so coachable, so moldable, and that they had great energy,” Jasper said. “The look in their eye was like—it was shockingly wonderful.”

The girls needed to be coachable, because Jasper saw no reason to water down his coaching style for them. His mother was a “tough broad,” he said, and he grew up believing that women were every bit as powerful as men.

Jasper still values toughness and confidence. When describing what makes his team great this season, he said nothing specific about his players’ basketball skills. Instead, he focused on their character.

“They’re incredible young women,” Jasper said. “They’re independent, they’re opinionated, they’re strong-willed, and they’re just hardworking, really pretty decent players who play very unselfishly.”

Throughout his years at Pascack Valley, Jasper has done far more than teach dribbling and shooting. He has empowered young women, his players say.

“Even today, the girls are skillful, but I feel like they’re very aggressive,” said Barton, who watched a scrimmage this past December. “That’s the baseline that he instills in everybody.”

“I look at them, and they all look like pioneers to me,” Jasper said. “That euphoric feeling, I have all the time—not just that I had that with the first team, I have that every day when I go in the gym

“So I know obviously I made the right choice.”

Former players, current students, families, and more filled the stands on Thursday. Back in the first season, the crowds for girls basketball games consisted of “a couple people,” Barton said. “Maybe a couple boyfriends.”

It wasn’t until the late 70s and early 80s, Jasper said, that the bleachers filled. That was when Pascack Valley became a powerhouse. Led by two All-Americans—Laura Dougherty ’81 and Janet Schwarz ’82—and Rebecca Kucks ’82, the Indians won county championships in 1980 and 1981 and state championships in 1981 and 1982.

“They put us on the map,” Jasper said of those three players. All went on to play Division I basketball: Dougherty at Notre Dame, Schwarz at Rutgers, and Kucks at UMass.

These days, the gym is not packed for every game. But the Indians have a vocal student section supporting them, as well as a contingent of parents. Alumni and families fill the stands at Pascack Valley’s annual holiday tournament.

“If you’ve got a good product,” Jasper said, “people will come and watch you.”

Every player at Pascack Valley gets her own basketball, tennis ball, and jump rope. The girls need them all at practice. Jumping rope is part of the team’s warm-up routine, while the basketball and tennis ball go together in ball-handling drills.

In one drill, players dribble with one hand while bouncing their tennis balls with the other. In another, they dribble while throwing the tennis balls straight up in the air. Some drills are done in pairs, with each player dribbling while passing or catching a tennis ball.

“I feel like I run camp every day,” Jasper said.

Drills go far beyond simple layup and jumper lines. At a recent practice, one drill involved a player catching a bounce pass at an elbow from one teammate and then turning and throwing an overhead pass to the opposite corner, where another teammate shot a baseline jumper. Another recent drill consisted of a pump fake at the three-point line, one dribble to the left, one dribble in between the legs, and a jumper.

Every drill translates to the games, Jasper said. That was not always the case. His coaching style evolved after a former Pascack Valley boys basketball coach visited practice in Jasper’s second season and offered feedback.

These days, there are no suicides, no running-only exercises. Yet “we are a really well-conditioned team,” Jasper said. “Every drill that we do do is high-intensity.”

It’s easy to see that the drills are working. Senior Toriana Tabasco is the point guard, but every starter can—and often does—bring the ball up the court. It’s not uncommon for senior forward Kelly Smith, for example, to grab a rebound and then lead the fast break. When senior forward Kelly Petro receives an outlet pass, she can easily dribble past midcourt and start Pascack Valley’s motion offense.

Senior guard Brianna Wong makes reverse layups look easy because the Indians practice them. Tabasco protects the ball while driving for layups because Jasper teaches his players to hold the ball tightly against their bodies. Junior guard Brianna Smith drains three-pointers because, of course, Pascack Valley works on them.

When Barton watched a scrimmage this past December, she saw how the girls’ skills had improved since her time on the team.

“The passing was amazing,” Barton said. “That’s what really stuck out to me, how these girls were a unit and the passing was just such a high level. It was really cool.”