April 2024 ~
Had she known her high school and college accomplishments would obligate her to occasional future public speaking, Marcia Miles Gates (Roosevelt, 1982) may have thought twice before making so much noise on the court and in the classroom.
Clearly, she was focusing more time on scoring well on mid-terms, finals and in gymnasiums than she was on what her repeated high scores would add up to…a valedictorian speech to put the finishing touch on high school…another dreaded trip to the lectern 35 years later when she was inducted into the Washington State University Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Drew Bledsoe, Ron Cey, Craig Ehlo, Whitney Evans, Henry Rono and other Cougar greats.
It's not that having to speak before large crowds was the worst thing that ever happened to Gates. She just would have preferred to let her athletic and academic performances do all the talking. As she nervously announced in the YouTube video of Gates accepting her 2017 WSU honor: “It sure was a lot easier to step to the free-throw line than it was to step up to this microphone.”
Gates’ accomplishments certainly did speak volumes.
At Roosevelt, she earned four letters in basketball, was twice named 1st Team All-PIL, made 3rd Team All-State and left as the school’s career scoring leader. She also won three letters and qualified for state in tennis and earned two letters in volleyball and one more in softball.
In addition to senior class valedictorian, Gates was a member of Roosevelt’s Rose Festival Court and won a Multnomah Athletic Club Scholar Athlete Award.
As for her achievements at WSU, Gates’ Hall of Fame bio tells her story well:
“Marcia Miles came to Washington State in 1982 and immediately proved herself as one of the hardest working Cougars to grace the hardwood. She earned two First Team All-Northern Pacific Athletic Conference awards during her career while earning Women’s Basketball News’ All-America honorable mention in 1985. As a senior, Miles took home WSU’s Outstanding Female award.
“One of the best scorers to ever put on a WSU uniform, Miles became WSU’s fourth player to reach 1,000 points in her career. She finished her illustrious career with 1,485 points while averaging 15 points per game, which both ranked second all-time upon her graduation. She finished her career with three of the top four scoring seasons in WSU history at the time, including posting 483 points during her senior season, which ranked second. She did much of her damage at the free-throw line where she hit 78.9 percent of her attempts, setting the Cougars’ all-time record at the time.”
Going one-on-one in conversation, Gates’ words flow as easily as her baskets used to, though the stage fright reappears when she’s asked to speak about all the accomplishments that helped earn her induction into the PIL Hall of Fame in 2005.
“I know you want me to blow my own horn, but it’s not my horn to blow,” she says. “The Lord is responsible for anything I have accomplished. I’m grateful for all the opportunities he has given me, along with the support of my family, teammates and coaches.”
Gates spent the first part of her life in Illinois, where she played sports with the neighborhood kids and the older of her two younger brothers. Her second brother, Jay, who would become a star athlete at Benson and join Gates in the PIL Hall of Fame in 2020. She also has a younger sister.
After Gates’ seventh-grade year, her family moved to Portland, where she attended Portsmouth Elementary School before entering Roosevelt.
“I always liked athletics,” she says. “We had a hoop on the garage and I was always shooting baskets.”
Gates got her first opportunity to play organized basketball when she was 11, but not before her mother could prove she wasn’t a ringer.
“Mom tells me the coaches made me bring my birth certificate to prove I was 11 because I was taller than other kids and could make baskets,” she says.
Once at Roosevelt, Gates’ primary goal was just to make the junior varsity hoops team as a freshman.
“I was nervous about making JV,” she says. “I remember after a practice a JV coach came up to me and said, ‘The varsity coach would like to talk to you.’ So, I went and talked to Jerry Mismash, and he said, ‘I think I’d like you to try playing varsity as a freshman. You may not play as much as you would on JV, but I’d like you to consider it.’ My parents were like, ‘Go for it.’ Jerry was a fantastic coach, always so supportive. We still exchange Christmas cards. He has a special place in my heart.”
Mismash was also Gates’ tennis coach, the spring sport she switched to after playing softball her freshman year. Gates demonstrated her athletic versatility by also playing two years of high school volleyball but, she says, “Basketball was always my number one sport. I always felt better playing that the others. I feel really fortunate that I played in a time when it was easier to play a lot of sports. These days it seems like kids have to specialize in one sport if they hope to be able to play in college.
If there was a downside to playing when Gates did, it was that the popularity of women’s basketball was a far cry from what it is today. Because of that, instead of the competitive recruiting players as good as Gates enjoy now, it was primarily up to the players to recruit colleges.
Though Gates sent letters to several colleges, she was still surprised when she heard back from both WSU and Boise State. “I was floored that I got scholarship offers from those two,” she says.
Whatever words she used to sell her skills, they were life changing.
“I had a fantastic time at WSU,” she says. “The summer of my sophomore year I was able to go to China, Macau and Hong Kong with an Athletes in Action team. The Lord blessed my career.”
After earning her degree in accounting, Gates took a job with the Defense Contract Audit Agency at Rockwell Int'l Corp. in Anaheim, working in the same building as her future husband, Mike, who worked there for another government agency.
“Their group invited ours to a picnic,” she remembers. “We played volleyball and I was wearing an Athletes in Action shirt, so he knew I was a Christian and struck up a conversation. He had played tennis at the University of San Diego, so later he invited me to play. There were two other guys on the court, and they asked us if we wanted to play doubles. There was no way we should have beaten them, but we did, and I got a second date.”
That second date led others which led to marriage and eventually five children. Gates says she was “blessed to become a stay-at-home mom after her first child, Brian, was born. Over the next eight-plus years, the couple had four more children (Tracy, Drew, Jeremy and Krista) and moved four times, living in California, Arizona and Washington before settling in Escondido, Calif, for the majority of their child-rearing years. Gates home schooled all of her children.
They’re all grown, now, married and dispersed across the U.S. Gates and her husband, who have been married for 35 years, have spent the last two years being what she calls “digital nomads,” spending one to three months in one city before moving on to the next which, in the first part of 2024, has been Phoenix.
They plan to touch down in Bend for the summer of 2024.
“I’m not sure how long we will be in this kind of life,” says the grandmother of two (soon to be three). But I’m getting kind of used to it. I’m a little envious of people who have kids in same town or near to where they live, but that’s never going to happen. And if they did live nearby, we probably wouldn’t be around for long anyway.”
Gates says she was “shocked” to learn she had been inducted into the PIL Hall of Fame, and not just because she “didn’t even know there was a Hall of Fame. To think of all the people I am in there with is just a really cool thing. My dad used to say, ‘Do your best, and trust the Lord with the rest.’ I had all these dreams, but I never knew that these kinds of accomplishments were going to be part of ‘the rest’.”
Do you know Marcia Miles Gates? If you’d like to reconnect, she can be reached at mgates88_5@hotmail.com
Photo Note: Click on a photo to see its caption.
~ Profile written by Dick Baltus (Wilson, 1973)
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