Brad Gagne, the coach the new women's basketball team at North Seattle Community College, grew up in Omak, a lumber town with a population of about 4,500 located in eastern Washington, just 40 miles south of the Canadian border.

His parents still live there - his father manages a grocery store and his mother works for the Department of Social and Human Services.

Gagne says coaching is in his blood, thanks to growing up with a father who coached local soccer teams for many years.

When Gagne attended Omak High School, he found the school had no soccer team so he chose to play on the basketball team instead. Basketball soon became his "first love," he says.

However, when it came time for Gagne to choose a college, his desire to graduate from the University of Washington ever since he was 10-years-old proved "more important than a couple of years of basketball" playing somewhere else.

Gagne didn't try out for a roster spot on the Husky basketball team because he couldn't afford to be a walk-on, so he pursued a job as student manager of the UW women's team, instead, which he wound up getting. Gagne also worked his way through college as a valet parking attendant for the Silver Cloud Inn hotel chain. In his spare time, he played pickup games, or "Rat Ball," constantly around UW.

Gagne chose to major in accounting when he scored well on his first test with little effort. He says, "I have a kind of a math mind. It came easy to me." He says his knack for numbers enables him to make quick calculations in evaluating what plays can be achieved to win a game with only a certain amount of time on the clock.

Gagne says he prefers to coach women because he "deals a lot less with attitude," a difference he discovered while helping with the Washington Huskies women's basketball team. "Egos aren't the same. Women are more receptive to coaching," he says.

In addition to coaching women's basketball at NSCC, Gagne holds a fulltime job as an assistant controller for Taco Del Mar, a popular fast-foot chain whose headquarters is located in downtown Seattle.