‘You need thick skin’: Legendary hoops coach Raul Mendoza gets proper sendoff

GALLUP – They came from as far as Texas. Some folks made the trip up north from Phoenix but most of the people were from the local area.

These people gathered this past Saturday to give their legendary coach, Raul Mendoza, a proper retirement sendoff at the Gallup Community Service Center.

“I’m really humbled and honored that this was done,” Mendoza said. “I can’t thank you enough or express the words how thankful I am.”

Mendoza retired from coaching high school basketball this past spring, which included a one-year stint coaching the Window Rock Scouts girls JV team.

The southern Arizona native coached and mentored thousands of student-athletes over a span of four decades having coached at high schools in Alchesay, Chinle, Coconino, Holbrook and Window Rock with the latter alumnus group organizing the event.

“I was actually nervous coming here,” Mendoza said while comparing the retirement dinner to getting married for the very first time.

“This is something that I will always remember,” he said. “I want to thank the people who took the time to put this together and the people who took the time to be here.”

The group that planned the event included Window Rock alumnus Darwin Mitchell, Theresa “Reese” Begay, Richard Begay, Dinah Lewis, Jay Woodie, Jay Notah and Greg Owens as well as Chinle’s Moe Draper.

“I played four years for coach,” Mitchell said. “He made me work for my position and one of the things that he did was he didn’t cut corners.”

Mitchell, who played in the late 1970s to the early 80s, said his teammates had to play by the rules under Mendoza, who built his team behind discipline and hard work.

“He didn’t let things go,” he said. “He sat me out for one game, and I learned from it because I never did it again. Nowadays, you can’t do that. People will pout and run to their chapter officials.

“Back in our day we were really disciplined,” he added. “We had to work for everything we had. We never gave up and we never ran to our moms and dads.”

In addition to being his coach, Mitchell said Mendoza served as a father figure.

“I didn’t have a father,” Mitchell said with his voice cracking. “But he took care of me so that was good. He was a father to so many. He was a father to my son and my daughter and now he has grandkids and I really appreciate that. I’m trying to use his teaching to mentor a lot of our kids.”

Jay Notah, who played alongside Mitchell, said Mendoza’s first varsity team had to play up as the Fighting Scouts competed with the likes of Coconino, Flagstaff, Mingus, Tuba City and Winslow.

Notah said the school had an influx of students from Navajo, New Mexico as that community did not have its public high school built until the mid-1980s. With that Window Rock moved up from 1A to the 2A level.

Notah likened the 2A level as playing in today’s 4A competition and they did it without having much size.

“Our tallest player was Leonard Buck, and he was 6-foot tall,” he said while noting that their conference opponents had guards as tall as Buck.

“The forwards they had were like 6-5 and their centers were like 6-8,” Notah said. “That is who we played against and that was a lot of fun.

“In my perspective that is where ‘rez ball’ started,” he added. “The reason why I say that is we had to run to compete. We didn’t have the height, so we had to play full court, man-to-man to compete against those big schools. Again, it was fun.”

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from ASU in 1977, Mendoza followed Glenn Haven to Window Rock as he befriended Haven in college.

“He asked me to come to Window Rock to be his assistant,” Mendoza recalled.

But when he got to Window Rock, the boys team had no openings.

“At that time (Don) Flanagan was still the head coach,” Mendoza said of the former UNM women’s basketball coach who also built a girls basketball powerhouse at Eldorado High School in Albuquerque in the 1980s.

“They had a really good team then and they were state runner-up,” he said of Flanagan’s boys team. “They went to the final four in his last two years before he moved.”

With that he was asked to start with the girls basketball program at Window Rock by coaching the JV squad.

“I’ve always loved coaching, so it didn’t matter,” he said of taking the girls position. “A majority of them were freshmen and I think we had like only two sophomores.”

According to Mendoza, the squad he coached had lost only one game. The players he mentored begged to differ.

“I still disagree about losing that one game,” said Theresa “Reese” Begay.

The Window Rock alumna was adamant that Mendoza learned a lot from coaching the girls team.

“We taught him to be a better coach,” she said. “That is what I believe. He pushed us hard and if we made mistakes, he would make us do suicides.

“We wanted him to dish it to us, and we did what he asked,” she said.

Mendoza said he pushed his girls so hard that he made them cry sometimes.

“Even then they would always work hard for me,” he said. “They would do everything, and nothing could stop them.”

Mendoza said that team was so good that the teams they played could not get the ball past halfcourt.

“Our defense was that good,” he said.

Following that season, Mendoza took over the boys freshmen team with Mitchell entering his first year of high school.

“Darwin was a natural leader and he led by example,” Mendoza said. “I think we went 12-6 overall and it was such a joy to coach that team because I had a bunch of great kids.”

Mendoza said his freshmen team went to great lengths to do what was best for the team.

“I didn’t have to tell them anything,” he said. “You know, when we opened the doors, they would grab the broom and sweep the floor before we started. They were so mature in doing all those things.”

With Flanagan’s departure following the 1978-79 season, it took some time for Mendoza to put his hat in for the head coaching position.

“Coach Flanagan kept bugging me to apply, but I told him I didn’t have the experience,” he said. “I came out of college, and I coached the girls one year and the boys freshmen for one year. That was all I had.”

Although he struggled with it, Mendoza did apply and when he got hired, he had to work with a Scouts team that was rebuilding.

“The year I took over our conference was very strong,” Mendoza said. “It was one of the top conferences in the state. I started three sophomores – Darwin Mitchell, Lamont Yazzie, and Leonard Buck. I had two juniors that played with the varsity the year before, but they sat on the varsity bench with no experience.

“I basically started with a JV team playing a varsity schedule,” he added. “We had a tough time. The only thing positive thing that happened that year was we were in the record book because we went four overtimes with Tuba City, and we beat them. That was the highlight of the year for us.”

Following that season, Mendoza and then-assistant coach Louie Pisano were on the hot seat as the Window Rock Unified School District Board members were looking to replace them.

“We didn’t win that year and the community wanted a Navajo coach,” he said while noting that they attended a school board meeting to defend their positions.

“They spoke Navajo the whole time, so we didn’t know what they were saying,” he said.

To help save their jobs, Mendoza’s Navajo wife, Marjorie, spoke to the school board and they reconsidered.

“They didn’t know that I was married to a Navajo,” he said. “All of a sudden, things changed and if it weren’t for my wife I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Pisano said he was fortunate to be Mendoza’s first assistant.

“I’m sure he was in shock when Mr. Trotter said your assistant is some Italian guy from New Jersey,” Pisano said. “I’m sure he was pretty thrilled about that. We had four years together and I really enjoy our friendship. It extends over 43 years and we still keep in contact to see how each of us are doing.”

Pisano said he and Mendoza went through a lot that first year, but they got through the season in decent shape.

“It wasn’t easy, and it was kind of tough,” he said. “We weathered the storm and good things happened. If you go to the past, that happens with a lot of first year coaches.

“There’s a lot of moaning and groaning and complaining, but if you give a person enough time, good things happen,” Pisano. added. “The success with coach Mendoza is evident everywhere he went; he had winners, so it’s a tribute to his ability to coach and relate to students.”

Pisano said he got to see a lot of Mendoza’s teams compete in the playoffs when he moved away to Yuma, Arizona.

Through his tenure, Mendoza coached with Los Angeles Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabber during the late 1990s while coaching the Alchesay Falcons.

While coaching for the Fighting Scouts in his second stint in 2015, New York Times writer Michael Powell visited Window Rock, a place Powell had lived at before for six weeks when his wife, Evelyn Intondi, worked as a midwife at the IHS hospital in Fort Defiance.

Powell wrote an article when the Scouts hosted Chinle, and he promised Mendoza he would come back the following year to write a book on his Scouts team.

But Mendoza then bolted for Chinle.

“I thought it wasn’t going to happen,” Mendoza said of “Canyon Dreams,” the book that was released in 2019 about his Chinle boys basketball team.

The legendary coach credited the in-depth article by Powell for opening the doors on the docuseries “Basketball or Nothing,” that was released in 2019 by Netflix. That successful docuseries revolved around the Chinle Wildcats and head coach Raul Mendoza.

Matt Howley, the producer and director of The Workshop, read the New York Times article and he felt that there was more to tell.

“Because of that article, Matt thought about coming to Chinle and do the documentary,” Mendoza said. “Because of that, Matt and his crew did the documentary on Netflix.”

As one of the area’s longest tenured coaches, Mendoza led four of his teams to the state title game with Holbrook winning the Arizona 3A state title game in 2011.

He led two other Holbrook teams to a runner-up finish in 1989 and 1991. His other state runner up finish came during the 1998 season while coaching the Alchesay Falcons.

“Coach Mendoza has lasted a long time, and you don’t find guys like that anymore,” Pisano said. “It’s tough being a coach because people can’t handle it. To last as long as he had, and to sustain the success that he’s had – that takes a special person.

“Most people can’t take it,” he added. “You need thick skin to be a coach because there is always somebody that is going to complain.”

Through the years, Pisano said, Mendoza always withstood the outside pressures and the complainers.

“He believed what was right,” he said. “He always stood by his principles, which I always admire of him.”

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