April 16, 2008

Dan Coonan
Director of Athletics and Recreation

Opening Statement:
"It is a great day for Santa Clara and a great day for Santa Clara athletics. I love Jennifer in this role for so man reasons. She's got integrity in spades. With every position you hire for, especially at Santa Clara, fit means everything, she fits famously. She's very familiar with the smaller, private, Jesuit school environment. At Gonzaga the athletic director, trainers, parents former students, players, you name it, they all rave about her personal approach, which will work wonders for her here."

"Beyond all that, she can coach. I don't apologize for wanting to win and I think she can absolutely bring us to where we want to be. She knows this conference up and down, knows our team and what we have and what we need. In the end it never hurts to take someone off the bench of one of our top rivals. I'm a firm believer in giving enthusiastic assistant coaches a chance when someone has the qualities that Jennifer has. She's absolutely the right person for us."

Jennifer Mountain
Santa Clara Women's Basketball Head Coach

Opening Statement:
"I can't tell you how excited I am to be here today. I feel very fortunate to be standing here as the new head women's basketball coach. A lot of schools won't take chances on assistant coaches and I feel very fortunate to be here. The people at Santa Clara have made this experience great for me. I learned a ton from [Gonzaga head coach] Kelly [Graves]. He's been a great mentor. He did a great job of allowing me to have more responsibility, almost like a co-head coach, and it's readied me for this position."

On coming to Santa Clara:
"I've had a lot of people over the past couple of weeks ask me, "why Santa Clara?" The answer is fit. From the moment I stepped on campus I felt like I belonged here. I made a couple of comments throughout the interview process that I didn't expect to like it as much as I did when I came here. That was really important for me. This is a special place. The people here are outstanding. They have a great value system, integrity, and they want to win and succeed, and that's really important to me. I'm going to love to come to work every day."

On her goals for the program:
"Ultimately you want a player to walk out of here in four years with a degree and a great experience. Santa Clara has a ton to offer. I want them to walk out of here with a degree and say `I loved playing for her.' I envision great things for my program and I have high expectations of my players. I'm looking forward to working with the community and getting students involved and bringing back championships to this team as soon as possible."

On her style of basketball:
"I bring a real up-tempo pace. I'm a quick hitter into a motion offense type of a person. We're a little small right now, but I'm hoping with recruiting in the next few weeks to fill some spots."

On coaching the boys team at Saint George's:
"It's a personality difference really. Going from high school girls to high school boys, the level is obviously different, but going from high school boys to college girls, it's a little more similar. As far as coaching went, there wasn't a difference for me. When I first took the job [as the high school boys coach] people were like, `you're going hire a gal?' But as soon as we started winning all that stopped."

On the current Santa Clara team:
"We had 21 wins last year, so it's not like I'm inheriting a team that doesn't win. They've done well and their work ethic is great. If you put my style with their work ethic I know great things will happen."