Emily (Vracin) Kosderka and her children, Colby and Sydney.
Emily (Vracin) Kosderka was money.
There have been great basketball players at Coupeville High School over the years, but was there ever another Wolf player who you were more confident would absolutely, positively put that ball in the hoop at crunch time?
If you say yes, you’re lying.
Now married and a mother of two, the 1992 grad — who also played some pretty dang good volleyball and softball during her days in the red and black — was among the best basketball players I have seen play for CHS in the 22 seasons I have been on this Island.
You can make arguments for Ashley Ellsworth-Bagby, Brianne King, Lexie and Brittany Black, Tina Joiner, Linda Currier and a couple of others.
Mike Bagby, Cody Peters, Hunter Hammer and Virgil Roehl are in the argument as well.
But Kosderka was Coupeville’s answer to Larry Bird. If she didn’t have ice water in her veins, she was close.
Modest, too.
“Ha! Oh, I doubt anyone remembers me from back in the day, but on the off chance they do, I hope they remember me as you did,” Kosderka said. “Honestly, I take that as a huge compliment, because that is how I hoped to be perceived — very confident, but a team player.
“Magic Johnson once said that during his playing days, he approached the game “with effort and joy” and it made me smile because I could really identify with that,” she added. “In fact, to this day, it’s pretty much my approach to life in general.”
And she agrees with the Bird comparison, to a point.
“It’s funny that you bring up Larry Bird,” Kosderka said. “One of my favorite quotes of all time is from him — ‘In the closing seconds of every game, I want the ball in my hands for that last shot – not in anybody else’s, not in anybody else’s in the world.’ And that doesn’t come from a place of cockiness, but of confidence.”
She retains fond memories of her days as a Wolf, recalling how each of her coaches imparted lessons that have stayed with her and helped shape her as she has gone through life.
“Phyllis Textor (basketball), Deb Cummings (volleyball), and Pam Jampsa (softball) were all extremely influential on me and each in their own ways,” Kosderka said. “They had very different coaching styles, but each took the time to teach me a lot about the game, but more importantly about life.
“And now that I really sit down and think about it, other than the flex offense and deny defense, it’s the life stuff that I remember the most,” she added. “After spending the last 20 years in athletics, and realizing how much the game has to teach about life, it’s easy to say that they did it right.”
Having been taught well by her coaches and teachers (“Mr. Engel, Dr. Whittaker, Mr. Bagby, and Ms. Erbaland were some of the most amazing people and I am grateful to them almost on a daily basis, even after all these years. There is no better feeling than to know that someone truly, truly believes in you, and the education they provided extended much further than the classroom.”) Kosderka made a successful leap to college.
She played basketball for two years at Willamette University and then moved into sports medicine, getting a Masters in Kinesiology from Indiana University.
After three years as an assistant athletic trainer with Lewis & Clark College, she made the jump to Concordia University, where she has been the head athletic trainer and taught since 2001.
Married for 10 years to Matt Kosderka, and the mother of a six-year old (Sydney) and four-year old (Colby), she is content with where life has led her. And she firmly believes her days on the diamond and the court helped make her strong enough to weather the storm of changes over the years.
“I could write a novel on the lessons learned through sport,” Kosderka said. “Sport molded me and shaped me into who I am today.
“I learned to compete, to compromise, to revel in the success of others, to work within a team, to respect the officials, to take direction, to be a leader, to always be open to learn, to win gracefully and to lose graciously (most of the time), to endure pain, to manage heartache, to strive for success and to struggle to obtain it, to recognize the unequivocal joy of reaching a goal that you had to work really hard to obtain, and the fact that the best part of it all are the people you are in it with,” she added. “That is what sport gives us. These are the lessons it can teach.”
There is still one lesson to learn, however, and that is how she will deal with being the mom of an athlete (or not).
“Do I want my kids to follow in my athletic footsteps? That is a big question with a complex answer,” Kosderka said. “It sounds cliche, I know, but my greatest hope is that my kids find their passion, whatever that may be.
“Matt and I talk about that all the time,” she added. “We wonder what it is that they will connect with and love and are excited to watch them discover that. Will it be sport? Or will it be music? The arts? Dance? Karate? Auto shop?”
While she still believes sports have a lot to teach, she is a bit leery of a hyper-competitive world of travel squads and year-round dedication to one sport, as opposed to “the good old days” when you rotated sports and played with your friends all year.
“I remember the days of little league in Coupeville when we played on crappy fields on Saturdays,” Kosderka said. “We wore polyester uniforms that were five years old, our parents sat on folding chairs, our coaches were dads who just wanted to help kids learn the game, and our competition was the kid down the street. It all seemed so simple, and unfortunately it just isn’t that simple anymore.
“So, we will see. If Colby’s heart beats for baseball and Sydney is determined to shoot 100 free throws every night, then it will be on their own volition,” she added. “In many ways, I hope they do. I hope they get to learn the lessons sport has to teach. I hope they learn to be good leaders, to rely on their teammates, to respect their coaches, to strive and to struggle, and to know the great exuberance of a big win.”
Lessons their mom learned every time she stepped on the court, and reasons why she will never be forgotten by Wolf fans.
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