Renee Jimenez

1. How long have you been coaching for?

13 – 14 years

2. Why did you decide to pursue this career path?

I loved playing basketball as a kid, I played a lot of sports growing up…basketball was really the sport that I loved. I was always really curious to the coaching side of it and I think part of that was I really [had] amazing youth coaches growing up. I knew really early on probably in high school that I wanted to coach the college level.

3. Who is your role model when it comes to coaching?

I don’t have a specific role model I think worked for some pretty amazing coaches. I had some really great mentors in coaching […] and places I’ve been able to be and other coaches I’ve been able to be around. I think I have been really lucky to be around some hall of fame coaches and have those experiences.

4. What do you hope your team takes away from you as their coach?

I think as coaches you try and recruit players that match your personality…so much of what we talk about as a program is how we handle ourselves off the court how we go about our business everyday and how hard we work. One of the biggest things I always tell them is when I talk to your future employer or am writing a letter of recommendation for you I want to be able to tell people that you can lead or follow, that your on time, that you work hard, and can work with different types of people. There’s a few cues we talk about as a program that are important to us and staples of the kind of young women we want them to be when they leave.

5. What are your goals for the remainder of the season?

We are playing our best basketball right now which is really exciting we started out with a really tough non-conference schedule and took it in the chin it was hard for us to get back on track but I think our kids have done a great job sticking with it and goes back to that workers mentality that good things happen to people who work. Everyday they come in and they work hard. Our goal is not only to get into the conference tournament but to also get a higher seat in the conference tournament.

B.J. Foster

1. How long have you been coaching for?

Second year at CSUSM, 15, 16 years.

2. Why did you decide this career path?

My dad was a college basketball coach and I played college basketball, just been around the game my entire life.

3. What was your college experience like playing basketball?

I had a great college experience; great teammates enjoyed competing with them. Made some lifelong friends from those experiences and we did pretty well so that made it fun.

4. Who is your role model in basketball?

I always liked Byron Scott, and Reggie Miller and Larry Bird and the guys who could really shoot. When I got into coaching obviously the greats, Coach Krzyzewski and the ones who have had a lot of success and read their books and try [to] understand their leadership qualities.

5. What do you hope your team takes away as a coach?

I hope the team has a great experience and that they like myself developed relationships with one another that are going to last a lifetime. I hope they have learned how to compete and to care deeply about whatever they decide that they want to go into, whatever career field, and I hope they can use and reflect on their basketball experience to understand that in order to succeed they need to care deeply about what they are doing.

6. What are your goals for the remainder of the season and how do you plan on achieving that?

Obviously we have goals of winning games but winning games is a byproduct of really improving. Our goal right now is to improve and improve until we aren’t allowed to play anymore that’s kind of something our team has reevaluated over the last two days especially that we want to try and make a commitment to get better. I think if we do that and really focus on improving the wins and the success will come from that.