Five months of recruiting conversations left Kyla Palpallatoc undecided. One phone call changed everything.
Kyla Palpallatoc had been talking to college coaches for months, and none of the conversations had settled anything.
There were universities and community colleges in the mix, up and down San Diego County. She had taken visits. She had weighed options. But nothing had clicked.
Then she got on the phone with Coach Wes Perryman.
“I committed on the spot,” Kyla recalled. “When I was talking to him, he just felt like the leader and mentor I was looking for.”
She was his first commit at Grossmont College. Two seasons later, having followed him to MiraCosta College and helped carry a program to the state championship game, she still talks to him every single day.
Kyla grew up in San Diego in a family that lived and breathed basketball, and she found her way into sports by signing herself up for things. Track first, because she liked hanging around athletes. Then football, volleyball, softball, soccer, and basketball, all by the age of seven or eight.
She was an athlete to her core and when it came time to think about higher education, it was not even a question whether that would continue. Kyla had ambitions to continue her basketball success and just wanted to find the right landing spot. During her first year playing with Grossmont, she led the conference in scoring and earned first team all-conference honors. Then came the transition.
MiraCosta College saw the achievements and potential of Coach Wes and offered him the full-time women’s basketball role on campus. And having had so much success with him during her first year, Kyla and her teammates were ready to make the move with him.
The process wasn’t as simple though. To keep chasing her dream, Kyla was commuting from Chula Vista to Oceanside every day. Her mornings started at six when she would wake up and ride up north with a teammate or assistant coach then arrive at MiraCosta College around nine for a morning workout. Then she did her coursework on campus before lunch. Then practice. Then the weight room. Then the drive home to finish up her homework and sleep.
It was hard, but it was all worth it for Kyla.
Explained Kyla, “From the beginning we wanted to continue the success we had as a team. Even with our new teammates, we made an effort to make everyone part of one big family. I really think that helped us get as far as we got.”
And what they got was a run that turned heads across campus. Staff started showing up to watch practice and students were showing up in bunches. As the season progressed, the games got louder and louder.
“It was a different feeling,” Kyla said. “That energy was so infectious and we fed off of it.”
As one of the team’s captains, Kyla led mostly without raising her voice. She was among the players with the longest history under Coach Wes, which meant the standard was hers to model.
“Day in, day out, I made sure to show my team what hard work meant and what was expected of us as a group,” recalled Kyla. “Coach Wes gave us the tools and the direction, and it was our responsibility to put that into practice.”
The season ended in the state championship game, capping a year in which Kyla had played essentially nonstop from April through March. But the final score is not what stays with her. What Kyla carries from that season is the way it felt to be part of it. Coach Wes ran practices with music playing and jokes flying, and the group learned how to work hard and enjoy the work at the same time. There were stretches of the year that demanded everything, and they were easier to give because of the environment around her.
“When you play happy, you do better,” Kyla noted. “He looks at you as a person first, and that made me want to play harder for him.”
That care came with a commitment too.
Since her freshman year, she and Coach Wes had talked about where basketball could take her next, and he had promised to get her in front of the right programs. So when Kyla watched UC Merced play and saw she might be able to help the team grow, Coach Wes didn’t hesitate. Within 24 hours, he had connected with the head coach and introduced Kyla.
Recalled Kyla, “Just seeing everything coming to reality from what we were talking about when I first met him, it was so surreal.”
When she took her visit, she went looking for the same thing that had made her say yes on a phone call two years earlier. She found a coach she could actually talk to and a roster that had grown close.
“Culture was the one thing I was really trying to see,” she said.
This fall, Kyla will move north and pursue the next chapter in her journey as a student athlete. She plans to study public health at UC Merced with an eye toward physical therapy or athletic training, and eventually, perhaps, a bench of her own as a head coach.
“One day I would love to have the same impact on players that Coach Wes did for us,” beamed Kyla.