Between her guinea pigs and pet cockatiel—who whistles the Andy Griffith theme song—Jane Albright could start a pet shop.

And someday she probably will.

Nearing the end of her third season as head coach of the NIU women’s basketball team, Albright has always loved animals—enough to where she almost became a veterinarian.

But her successes as a player—receiving letterwinner honors all four years at Appalachian State University—and as a coach—including modifying a losing high school program to a 20-7, Final-16 squad after four years of her effort—have kept Albright out of the cages, and in with the cagers.

Although Albright’s enthusiastic coaching techniques may look to fans as though she wants to throw on a jersey and relive a previous experience, this is not the reason she chose her career.

“I didn’t coach because I would like to hang on to (basketball),” Albright said. “It’s a great sport. The lessons it can teach you are very, very deep, and they make you not only a better ballplayer, but a better person.”

But Albright feels she has had her share of playing time. If the women’s boss were given the golden opportunity to play now, with her previous skills, she thinks she would more than likely pass it up.

“Nowadays, people get confused and play for the wrong reasons,” Albright said. “Like they might say, ‘Well, my daddy wanted me to play,’ or something like that. Back (when I played), you played for yourself. I don’t think I could play now, even with the skill level I had then.”

Albright picked up a few coaching tips here and there, but she likes to give credit to Pat Summitt—head coach at Tennessee, where Albright served as grad assistant from 1981-83—for 90 percent of her knowledge.

“Jane has a great love for basketball,” Summitt said. “She took full advantage of the opportunity to learn every phase of the game. She accepted whatever I gave her in terms of workload, and I trusted her immediately.”

Coming from a winning program such as Tennessee (22-10 and 25-8 the two years Albright attended) has its definite pluses, but Albright didn’t want to start her head coaching experience at the top.

“I like to create,” Albright said. “To walk into a program such as Iowa wouldn’t have been what I wanted.”

Developing the program at NIU has been Albright’s task for the last few years. She begins each season setting the goal for the squad to win 20 games.

This year’s 9-13 team record, with only six games left to play, is making the task intangible. But Albright continues to live by the philosophy of those she admires—people with persistency who are slapped in the face, but continue to succeed—in hopes that one day her dream will come true.

“I know a lot of people can’t see it, but I can feel it,” Albright said of her team’s ability to win 20 games in a season. “I have this elusive dream to be the best team we can be.

“My favorite quotation is ‘most of what we see is behind our eyes’. People have a lot of circumstances. Some are positive, and some are negative. This is true of the type of people I admire.”

While Albright—whose licence plate reades “NC BORN 2″—misses her native area of the South, she does not regret her choice of Northern.

“This is where I choose to be—I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to,” Albright said. “I don’t think I’ll be here another 50 years, though—I’ll go back someday.”