From surgeries & seizures to a hall of fame
Mullen's Ami Zach learned lessons while playing for fun.
As a freshman hoops junkie in 1994, Ami Zach had no idea she would become a hall-of-famer.
For Zach, now the Marketing and Communications Director at Mullen, it was life and basketball, basketball and life, before she came a long way.
And she can point to the 1994-95 Doherty in Colorado Springs team that went 25-0, won Colorado’s Class 5A championship and finished second nationally that was the apex of a career that soon spiraled down through injury and medical issues, and forced her to understand life without the game.
That particular Spartans group was simply loaded and recently was inducted into the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame at the 20th annual dinner, hosted at The Broadmoor World Arena.
And it was tightknit.
“Some of us are still fairly close, we keep in touch when we can,” Zach said.
Zach was a freshman with a group that mostly played together as grade-schoolers, dominated the high-school level and sent a wave of talent into the high ends of women’s college basketball.
However, Zach also got the life education that comes with scholastic sports.
For instance, she was a freshman point guard who got to start a couple of games with good, older teammates. But as a sophomore, the lessons really rolled. She suffered a knee injury during a Christmas tournament and was done for the season. She came back as a junior, but not for long – she had five knee surgeries before she would transfer to Coronado as a 12th-grader.
While some powers such as Oregon State and UCLA showed interest, problems with seizures also began and more than one were violent enough to separate her loose shoulders, which eventually led to another surgery.
Zach, a talent who had range and could handle the ball, would sign with the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, but never played a game.
“Trying to go to college and play ball while having uncontrollable seizures,” she said, “was difficult, it was like getting hit by a truck with each seizure, and my memory was impacted with every episode I had.”
Plus, she said, “no one talked to me about life without basketball, I kept trying to push through and force it to happen.”
Even a medical-redshirt freshman season didn’t help.
“I had to quit, for my health and well-being,” she said. “It’s why I got into coaching.”
She worked her way from freshman coach at Coronado to head coach, decided to move to Denver, had a stop at nearby Sheridan and joined Mullen in 2010, serving as Frank Cawley’s freshman coach before taking command of the girls program in 2011-12.
She got out of it when starting her own family, but reuniting with teammates helps quench her different thirst for basketball. It wasn’t what it once was, but reliving some of the past within the correct context alongside friends continues to carry meaning.
“We were a tight group that played many games together, from elementary school to junior high and there were a couple of us who maybe lost, like, six games from sixth grade to our senior year,” Zach said. “We were just a group that travelled together, the families worked together and the parents yelled at the players and didn’t take it out on the coaches.”
Zach played with the likes of Stephanie (Frisch) Leasure, Dena (Koskovich) Pena, Nikki Swagger and Jacque (Johnson) Morgan. Even though they defeated Oregon City High twice, home and away and including during the summer, they were second nationally.
The Spartans went into the hall with the late John Clune, Air Force athletic director; Steve Bartalo, a Doherty/Colorado State running back; Palmer High sprinter Aleisha Latimer; Allison Jones, Paralympic star; and Don Lucia, Colorado College ice hockey coach.
Said Zach: “It was about basketball, not about egos … there’s more to life than basketball. It’s a team thing. You played your part and had fun. It’s why you did it.”
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