Around noon on Monday, Harvard-Westlake of Studio City girls basketball Head Coach Melissa Hearlihy gathered her team and proudly announced that after all these years she had “finally graduated from high school after 40 years.”
The girls stared whooping it up and cheering for their coach not really understanding that this graduation was a bit different than the one the California native had from Alvin High in Texas, or even her college graduation in 1983 from the University of San Francisco where she starred as a power forward. This graduation comes in the form of the retirement of Hearlihy from the ranks of girls’ high school basketball coaches. “Telling the team was very emotional,” Hearlihy remarked. “And I thought telling them that way would soften things but they didn’t really understand until I actually told them I was retiring today.”
Along the way, Hearlihy amassed 839 career coaching wins in 39 years of coaching, 15 at Bishop Alemany (West Hills) and 24 at Harvard-Westlake, two CIF State Championships, both at Harvard-Westlake, including the 2023 Division II State Championship, seven CIF Southern Section Championships, three at Bishop Alemany and four at Harvard-Westlake.
The 839 career coaching wins currently places Hearlihy at No. 2 all time in the Golden State according to the Cal-Hi Sports Online Record Book. After her Wolverines won the Division IV State Championship, Hearlihy was named the 2010 Cal-Hi Sports State Coach of the Year. “For us to come back the next year after my winning that prestigious honor, and after such a terrible and troubling start, and then to win a state championship, God had to be smiling on us,” Hearlihy said.
Soon after graduating from the University of San Francisco, Hearlihy accepted a Grad Assistant position with Billie Moore at UCLA before coming to Alemany in 1984 to coach junior varsity.
In 1986, she took the varsity reins at Alemany and after a very successful stint there moved on to Harvard-Westlake where she also taught Physical Dducation with a Master’s Degree in the field.
“In my first four years and right after I got my masters I seriously considered coaching in college, and people still ask me why I didn’t move on to college,” Hearlihy remarked back in 2010. “This is the epitome of why I coach high school, for the life’s lessons, and to watch the girls trust and care about each other.”
“I might like to coach golf for little kids but I’m done coaching basketball,” Hearlihy continued. “I’m trading in the big orange ball for a little white one.”
Congratulations Melissa Hearlihy on a storied career as one of the greatest coaches in the history of California girls’ basketball, and good luck on the links (SportsIllustrated).
