When Mark Cooley (1964-67) joined the freshman team at CSUN, then known as San Fernando Valley State College, few thought he would eventually start on the varsity team much less one day become a Hall of Fame player. After all, just three years prior, he was nearly cut from the junior varsity team at Monroe High School.
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"I never played basketball," said Cooley. "I was big and clumsy as a 6-foot-3 10th grader. The only basketball that I ever played was in P.E. classes."
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Cooley scored 1,054 career
points with the Matadors
When it was time for his high school coach to make final cuts to the junior varsity squad, his coach was honest.
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"He said 'I'm not going to cut you from the team because you're tall and you carry your weight well but don't expect to play' and I didn't," said Cooley. "I played about five minutes all year and never scored a point."
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Things would change the following year. After a summer filled with practice, Cooley cracked the starting lineup on the junior varsity team and a year later, he played on the varsity team.
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"I wasn't all-league and I wasn't recruited by anyone including Valley State," said Cooley. "I was a 6-foot-5 kid, a little awkward and immature but fortunately for me, one of my teammates was recruited by Jerry Ball and asked me to come play on a summer league team at Valley College."
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Cooley feels he was only invited to play because there weren't enough players to fill out the roster. Valley State head coach Jerry Ball though took notice of Cooley, who played well in the league.
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"I had been planning on going to Pierce College but their recruiter at the time Denny Cruz recruited the best players in the Valley so I figured I wasn't going to play," said Cooley. "I ended up on the freshman team at Valley State. I had a pretty good season and averaged about 16 points but I don't think anyone saw me as a future starter on the varsity team."
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Earning a varsity spot through sheer hard work, Cooley admits that he was obsessed with the game and becoming the best player he could possibly be.Â
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"I wasn't a natural athlete or anything," said Cooley. "I was more of a person with OCD who really worked hard to get somewhere. I get obsessed with accomplishing certain things in my life and in those days, it was basketball."
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Cooley and head coach
Jerry Ball
Much like most of his basketball career, Cooley's time on the varsity squad got off to a slow start.
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Under coach Ball, the Matadors won a school-record 18 games but Cooley didn't see much action as a sophomore. Averaging about eight minutes, Cooley scored five points per game as other big men such as Frank Nordyke gained the most minutes on the court.
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Behind an unwavering attitude to improve, Cooley got back into the gym and worked at his game. The very next season, he earned a starting job on the team.
His new gig on the team though came with skepticism.
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"The preseason reports in the newspaper said we had four experienced players, a couple of them would probably be All-Conference or All-American candidates but the question was would I bring the team down with my inexperience," remembers Cooley.
He would silence the critics by averaging over 17 points per game in a junior year filled with accolades including all-conference recognition.
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"One of the games that season was televised against Cal State L.A. and I had a really good game," said Cooley. "They selected in those days, a Southern California Basketball Writers Player of the Week and it was usually Lou Alcindor and players like that and they selected me, which was a huge honor."
Standing at 6-foot-6, it may be surprising to discover that Cooley was the team's center. While undersized, Cooley thrived under coach Ball's offensive schemes.
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"I was a high-post center," said Cooley. "Jerry Ball liked the same offense that John Wooden had, in fact [Wooden's] first national championship was with a 6-5 center, Fred Slaughter, who was a bit stronger than I was. I shot very well on top of the key so my role a lot of times was to draw the bigger players away from the basket."
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Throughout his time at Valley State, Cooley had the luxury of playing with some of the top Matador players of the 1960's such as Ollie Carter, Bill Archer and Ben Williams.
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Cooley leaps on a jumpball
versus Evansville
"Ollie Carter had a good reputation as a junior college player at Valley College – I remember hearing he was joining the team and I asked a teammate who he was and I'll never forget that he told me Ollie was 'as good as Hazzard' as in Walt Hazzard," said Cooley. "He was an excellent passer, and I remember one time he moved across the court and I looked down for an instant only to have the ball hit my face.
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"Bill Archer was fast and few players that were 6-5 had that type of speed in those days – he also excelled in track & field and was an alternate to the Olympic team in the hurdles," continued Cooley. "Ben Williams was by far the strongest player I've ever played with and we nicknamed him 'train.' Paul Edmondson, who's in the CSUN Hall of Fame for baseball, was such an outstanding athlete that I heard he once bowled a perfect 300 game."
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Entering Cooley's senior campaign, the Matadors won their first nine games, highlighted by arguably their best win to date. Facing the third-ranked College Division team (Division II), the Matadors were an underdog against Evansville, a team that won back-to-back national championships in 1964 and 1965 and often defeated Division I teams.
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"That game had many elements to it because Jerry Ball was from Indiana and we had played Evansville the season before – they barely beat us at their gym," said Cooley. "We felt with confidence we could compete with them in our gym. We took a lead and we didn't give it up."
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Cooley would have one his best games to date against Evansville, scoring 30 points to help lead the Matadors to a 101-90 victory. However, a big part of the Matadors' win, according to Cooley, could be attributed to the play of Stu Schreiber. While an adept scorer, Schreiber was considered the team's defensive stopper. An injury though would cost him his season less than 10 games into the year.
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Judith Brame, Cooley and Bob
Hiegert at the 1985 Hall of Fame
induction ceremony
"Stu Schrieber had an excellent game against Evansville and played outstanding defense," said Cooley. "Stu blew out his knee and he couldn't play anymore. Our team went from being a really good Division II team where we weren't nearly as good without him."
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Despite the hurdles, Cooley helped lead the Matadors to 17 wins and earned All-CCAA First Team honors after averaging 19 points and 10 rebounds.
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Along with the Evansville game, Cooley had another memorable performance that season. He scored the second-most points in a game in team history when he tallied 40 at Cal State Fullerton. To date, only Cooley and Carter (47 points in 1966) have ever scored 40 in a game in school history.Â
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"The Cal State Fullerton player they put on me was two inches taller," remembers Cooley. "He thought with his height advantage, he could keep me from scoring if he let me get the ball. He obviously was wrong on that one."
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After his collegiate career, Cooley had a brief stint as an assistant coach to Pete Cassidy on the freshman team before beginning a career in teaching. A Spanish major at Valley State, Cooley became a Spanish teacher and also spent time instructing English and Spanish reading to children.
"If you're a teacher you keep on taking classes and I kept on taking classes to find out what my specific interests were," said Cooley. "I had more and more of an interest in English language learners in my career."
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In 1971, he earned a master's in education from CSUN and later another master's in school administration from the University of La Verne, which would lay the groundwork for him to work at the administration level.
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"I worked in the Hacienda Las Puente Unified School District for a period of time and the Asuza Unified School District," said Cooley. "I later became a program specialist in bilingual education and I retired as the director of the whole program at Azusa Unified in 2005."
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Cooley and wife of 51 years,
Diana, are still regulars at
CSUN Basketball games
Still though, despite working in different areas, CSUN remained a huge part of his life. His wife of 51 years, Diana, he met while he was on the basketball team and she was a songleader at the school. His son and granddaughter are CSUN graduates as well.
"CSUN brought us together in the first place and we feel very indebted to the university," said Cooley. "There were so many things that could have kept me from going to CSUN and kept my wife from going to school. If we hadn't associated ourselves with the athletic department, we wouldn't have met and our family wouldn't have existed."
Cooley and his wife have come to many Matador basketball games in the decades since they've graduated. They also have been regulars at alumni and fundraising events and have served on the Founders Day committee.
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"We enjoy coming back to the campus and seeing what it's become, which I think is a world-class institution," said Cooley.
While still a regular at the school, Cooley has kept in close contact with his former coach and teammates.
"I appreciate Jerry Ball now than I ever did before," said Cooley. "He was a major adult figure in my life and I still call him from time to time. Bob Allen, who was a starting guard my sophomore year is still a life-long friend and we go on bike rides together."
Cooley was inducted into the CSUN Hall of Fame in 1985, which would cement his long and winding journey through basketball.
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"I was really humbled and honored to be recognized like that," said Cooley. "It's a long way from being the last man on the bench at Monroe High School."
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