Schwarzer steps down as Cardinal girls' basketball coach

Citing her desire to not miss more of her young son’s early years, Medical Lake girls’ basketball coach Carey Schwarzer announced she would step away from the position.

“The main and pretty much my only reason for stepping down is I want to have more time for my family,” Schwarzer said. “My son just turned 2 and I just feel like I missed too much of his first two years.”

Schwarzer’s son Brian has somewhat of a love-hate relationship with basketball, she said.

“During the season at some point I noticed he figured out what a basketball gym looks like because anytime we drove by any school — Medical Lake, Newport or Spokane — he would always say ‘b-ball gym, b-ball gym, b-ball,’” Schwarzer said. He loved that part of it but when Schwarzer was gone, her son was crying for mom and he was too small to connect the reason why she was gone so much.

“She did some great things in her three years as our head coach,” Cardinals’ athletics director, Chris Spring wrote in an email.

“Not often do you find a coach with the playing and coaching experience like she has,” Spring said. “I wish her and her family the best and hope I get the opportunity to work with her again one day.”

Medical Lake has named Kyle Lundberg as Schwarzer’s replacement. “Kyle brings all the intangibles that we were looking for,” Spring said. “He is passionate, has high level experience mentoring young people and has a work ethic that is second to none.”  

Schwarzer leaves Medical Lake after compiling a 14-41 overall record in her three years and 5-14 last season. She said it’s especially difficult to stop after the last season. “We just weren’t satisfied, we felt like we could have played better.”

“We had some great games and quite a few great halves,” Schwarzer said. “But we didn’t put together a whole game.”

Looking at the win-loss column she said does not indicate how good of a team they really were. “The competitive part of me wants to keep going and do better next year,” she said.

Schwarzer, originally from Newport where she played high school basketball under her maiden name, Carey Sauer, helped lead the Grizzlies to the 1999 1A state championship. She went on to attend the University of San Francisco. Following graduation she played professional ball in Germany where she met her husband, Thomas.

Schwarzer will continue teaching seventh grade math at Medical Lake Middle School.

“I was very fortunate to work with a great coaching staff who supported my systems and coaching philosophy and valued teaching the fundamentals,” Schwarzer said. “I am also very thankful for the support that the booster club showed us the last three years.”

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].