Doug Stockham Recovering from Heart Surgery
Doug Stockham is well-known in the Inland Empire as one of the top prep basketball coaches of the past 30-plus years.
He won league titles with Riverside Ramona, Cajon, San Gorgonio and Westminster high schools.
His best teams probably were those he put on the floor at San Gorgonio from 1980 through about 1986. The 1981-82 team was particularly gifted, with Gerry Wright, Darryl Carter, Gilbert Quinbar, Pat Pruitt, Marvin Cash and Dave Sieger off the bench. That team went 29-1 and got to the CIF quarterfinals. The team he had the year before (Mike Jackson, Brad Miller, Vance Amador, Scott Bader, Wright) was 24-5 and also got to the quarterfinals.
Four of the guys off his 1981-82 team played major-college basketball, and Sieger eventually appeared in the NCAA championship game, playing for Oklahoma in its loss to Kansas.
Stockham, 65, has been a bit under the weather. He had heart surgery, twice, in October.
While working today on a piece for the Friday newspapers, I reached him at his mother's house in Fresno, where he is visiting for her 90th birthday.
He said the drive up was his first extended stint behind the wheel since his surgeries. But he's not ready to go back and see some prep basketball just yet.
"I'm not really ready to sit in the stands for two hours," he said. "I had a five-way bypass and I think two of them were probably from all the screaming I did as a coach."
Stockham said he went in for an angiogram at Redlands Community in October ... and before the day was over was in an ambulance to Saint Bernardine Medical Center in San Bernardino, where the operation was performed. He was back in the hospital a few days later with a blood clot caused, he said, by the ends of two wires (used to stitch up his sternum) that were irrititating his heart.
He said can feel improvement now, seven weeks later. Another few weeks, he may be ready for more hoops.
Comments
Best Wishes for a full recovery Coach Stockham! We are all happy to hear of your recovery and will keep you in our thoughts and prayers.
San G Class of "87".
Posted by: Neil Derry | December 27, 2007 8:38 PM