Cal State LA Athletics

A basketball and baseball player during his student years at Cal State L.A., Willie West gained greater athletic recognition through his 37 years of coaching Crenshaw High School’s boys basketball team, a career in which he amassed 802 victories (as of the end of the 2006-07 regular season) and 139 defeats. Only three other coaches in California history have more victories. His teams won a record eight state titles, 16 Los Angeles City Section titles and 28 league titles. The 1985 team, which finished 31-0, traveled to Denmark and won the High School International Tournament Championship. He has coached several players who made it to the NBA, including Marques Johnson. More than 40 of his former players later competed at four-year colleges, including current Cal State L.A. men’s basketball coach Stephen Thompson, who starred at Syracuse. In 1995, the Crenshaw High School physical education complex was renamed the Willie E. West Jr. Pavilion. In 1999 and 2000, West was selected as head coach for the USA High School Basketball Olympic team in Colorado Springs. In his first year, 1971, his team claimed the city crown and he was named the city’s “Coach of the Year,” an honor he would receive nine more times. He was named California “Coach of the Year” twice and Region 8 “Coach of the Year” twice. In 1990, the L.A. Sentinel newspaper named him “Man of the Year.”