Westmont college women's basketball coach Kirsten (McKnight) Moore doesn't lose very often.
She does, however, have one loss she will never get over. And it was no game.
Moore, 36, lost her husband, Alex Moore, on May 9 of last year due to complications of Crohn's disease.
And to make an already tragic story even more heart-wrenching, Moore was eight months pregnant with the couple's first child when her husband died.
Through it all, Moore, a graduate of Redwood High and a four-year basketball player at University of Oregon, has persevered.
A season after coaching the Warriors to their best season in school history ? they advanced to the Elite 8 in
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On Saturday at the Westmont gym, the university is holding the inaugural Alex Moore Classic, starting at 5:30 p.m. All proceeds from the event will benefit Kirsten and her daughter Alexis and help support Crohn's disease research, as well.
"It's not only losing a husband, but also having her first child ? on top of having a demanding job," said former Cal women's basketball coach Caren Horstmeyer, who Moore was an assistant coach for at Cal from 2000-04 and now works for Frank
Howard Allen Realtors in Marin. "I think it is amazing that she has been able to come back and remain in a head-coaching role and do as well as she's been able to do."Moore said she met Alex ? a biology professor at Westmont, a small liberal arts college in Santa Barbara ? her first year coaching the Warriors in 2006.
"There was no love at first sight, far from it," said Moore, who has guided Westmont to five national tournament appearances in eight seasons. "He took a long time to win me over. We were just friends. I was very focused on my job and building up the program. There was no time for romance at that point in my life. But he was very patient and we became good friends and really got to know each other."
Alex was a competitive bicyclist on the U.S. development team.
"He was a very competitive cyclist," Moore said. "He taught me to ride bikes and found somebody equally competitive. I didn't shy away from 4,000-foot hills that we were going to climb. I stepped up to challenge "... he found it very amusing."
By 2008, Kirsten and Alex were planning a May wedding. But in January of that year, Alex was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, an autoimmune disease that attacks the digestive
Kirsten McKnight passes the ball while playing for the Marin team in this 2005 photo from the San Francisco Pro-Am league. (IJ archive/Jeff Vendsel)
tract."He got really sick," Kirsten said. "The disease would flare up. He went through times where he was not so good and other times he felt pretty healthy. He actually started working out again and for one more summer he was still able to compete."
But late last spring, just about the time Kirsten's basketball team was putting the finishing touches on a 31-4 season, Alex's condition worsened.
"Last basketball season it got really bad," Kirsten said. "We went to see a bunch of surgeons. Finally, they decided his entire colon was going to be removed. They did the surgery and the surgery went incredible.
"We were hopeful he was on the road to recovery. He came out of the surgery fine."
That same night, with his wife beside his hospital bed and eight months pregnant, Alex insisted she go home for a good night's rest. She grudgingly agreed.
Kirsten never talked to her husband again.
Alex died during the night from a blood clot.
"You can't explain it," Kirsten said. "How can you be prepared when you get that phone call in the middle of the night? It's devastating. You think it's not real. You really can't imagine all the things that go through your head when it happens."
The Moores' daughter was born on June 29, less than two months after her dad died. Kirsten named the newborn Alexis, after her father.
Kirsten says she has dealt with her husband's sudden death as best she can. She said her faith, her family and her friends have helped her through the worst of times.
"I don't think at any point in life will I have gotten over this ? you don't get over this," she said. "It changes you in the deepest way. But it doesn't have to paralyze you. I've tried to grieve and approach this situation in a way that hopefully I can grow and become stronger because of it, and hopefully be a better person because of it.
"I am still very much in the process of grieving. Some days are easier than others. The holidays are tough and certain situations are tough like the first game (this season) when we beat Pepperdine. It was the first time we had beaten a D-I program. That was one of hardest days yet, not having him to share the victory with. It didn't feel nearly as good as it should have."
Kirsten says nothing in her life is easier since her husband died.
"It's harder to win and not have him to share it with," she said. "It's harder to lose and not have him to talk to about it. It's harder to raise a daughter as a single mom. My faith has grown. I'm thankful that when even something as tragic as this happens, God can work something good out of it."
Kirsten says the trials she has endured have changed her entire perspective on life, and quite possibly made her an even better coach.
"I think I've kept in good perspective," she said. "I think about him constantly. I'm hard-pressed to go a minute or two and not be thinking about him. He was a partner with me and what we were doing with the team. He was always supporting me in what I was doing, he really believed in me as a coach. I grew this great program at Westmont and he was my biggest fan and my biggest supporter."
"And my coaching has not escaped from the trials, either. Sometimes as a team we all cry together. Before one game I shared something with the team about perseverance and determination. While I was sharing some of girls started crying with me ? not crying weak, but because it means something to us, what we have learned from Alex's life, how we can persevere through challenges."
"Athletics is a lab for life lessons and we're living that. With his loss, we are in an arena where we have this incredible opportunity to build character and quality, whether it's on the court after a bad loss or whether it's losing somebody we were very close to unexpectedly."
The girls on the Westmont team grew to know Alex well.
"Alex was always at (coach Moore's) games and he was at the national tournament," said four-year Westmont player and senior co-captain Jill Wilber. "He drove us around. He was like our team dad. He was somebody we knew really well."
In Alex's office on the Westmont campus hanging on his wall was a poster, a paraphrase from a bible verse, I Chronicles, 28:20. It read, "Be strong and courageous and do the work. Do not be afraid or discouraged for the Lord God, my God, is with you."
A portion of the phrase has become this season's mantra for the Westmont team.
"Our motto this year is 'Do the work,'" Kirsten said.
The team has bought in.
"To help coach this year we have tried to support her as much as we could," Wilber said. "Words almost don't seem enough, so as a team, we made a pact, an unspoken pact, to do everything as players we can to make it as easy for her as possible. No drama, just work hard and make it an enjoyable year for her."
Kirsten, through the trials and tribulations, says she has learned valuable life lessons over the past several months.
"If there's any lesson I can take from Alex's death, it's that we can plan all we want but we don't have another day promised to us," she said "So, we need to live every day to its fullest and maximize the opportunities we have right now. Coaching is a lot more than basketball. It's a lot more than winning and losing. It's the opportunity to make a difference in people's lives. I have the opportunity to make a difference in my daughter's life and the 12 girls I coach."
And, even in death, Alex is making a difference in his wife's life.
Tim Menicutch covers college sports at the IJ. Send updates to tmenicutch@marinij.com.
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