''It was glaring,'' said Ms. Wright, the basketball coach at the high school, which serves Maplewood and South Orange, her usual smile disappearing at the thought of the C-minus. ''It stood out, and it was an indication that she wasn't working up to her potential. I benched her for three weeks and gave her a copy of Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' to read until her English teacher told me she was improving.''
Part mother figure, part stern coach and all teacher, Johanna Wright might be central casting's version of a female cross between Knute Rockne and Vince Lombardi, but with a philosophical leavening of a character in the novel who sees life like ''a great tree in leaf.''
She is the kind of coach for whom players' parents bake her favorite dessert (carrot cake) and who call at all hours to consult on everything from discipline and dating issues to college choices.
When her players aren't calling her Coach they call her Mother Love, and even opposing coaches talk about her ''big heart.'' But she has the reputation of a determined teacher who demands excellence and an irascible opponent who insists on fairness.
So few in the region were surprised when the organizers of the first McDonald's All-American High School Basketball Game for girls tapped her as coach of the East Squad last month. It means that on April 4, Ms. Wright's coaching skills will be on display when 24 of the nation's premier girls' high school basketball players face off at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.
Despite her success over 28 years -- a 420-140 record with more than 20 conference, county, sectional and tournament championships -- the prospect of the McDonald's game and the history that she will be making is exciting to Ms. Wright.
'I'll be like a kid in a candy store,'' she said. ''I'll just sit back and enjoy it and hope that the girls play some defense.''
Over its 25 years, the McDonald's boys' tourney has showcased schoolboys named Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, among others. High school coaches, sports writers and schoolyard scouts of basketball talent commonly use the word ''huge'' to describe the inclusion of girls.
Mike Quick, a producer for a weekly high school sports television program on the MSG channel, said that adding girls to the McDonald's event highlights the growing audience for women's sports. ''It is suddenly O.K. for guys to talk about women's basketball,'' he said.
Bob Geoghan, chief executive of Sports America, based in Washington, founded the all-star game and continues to organize it. He said that for some years the organization had felt that there should be a girls' high school all-star game.
Mr. Geoghan had already placed Ms. Wright on his short list when in November he was invited to New York to attend the third annual Frank McGuire Foundation Awards dinner, which honors area high school sports coaches. Ms. Wright was on the dais as one of the 2001 recipients.
''We were looking for a quality person who has the respect of her players, her institution and her peers,'' Mr. Geoghan said. ''She had all of that and was very impressive, and all I could say was 'Wow.' Plus she has sent about 34 girls to play at Division I schools.''
The coach of the West squad that Ms. Wright's all-stars will face is Dave Huell of the Mountainview High School girl's team in Orem, Utah.
Mrs. Wright was born in Winston-Salem, N.C., and her family moved to Montclair when she was a child. After graduating from Montclair High School, where she played basketball, she attended Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., and also played basketball. After graduation she returned to New Jersey where she met Lonnie Wright, a former Newark high school star athlete who had gone on to play both basketball and football at Colorado State University.
''He was a friend of my older brothers, and our first date was a one-on-one basketball game,'' she said.
They married and moved to Denver where Mr. Wright became the first two-sport professional athlete, playing in 1967 with both the Denver Broncos of the National Football League and the Denver Rockets of the old American Basketball Association. Mr. Wright is now director of of undergraduate programs at the New Jersey Medical School, part of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.
When the couple returned to the New York area in the mid-70's, Ms. Wright began teaching physical education and coaching girls' basketball at White Plains High School in Westchester. In 1979 her team won the state championship in their division. After moving to South Orange and giving birth to her daughter, Jazmine, in 1980, Mrs. Wright took a job coaching the junior varsity girls' team and the cheerleading squad at the high school as well as teaching physical education at South Orange Middle School.
It was as cheerleading coach that Ms. Wright showed her passion for fairness. She instituted a rigorous competition that resulted in Columbia's first racially integrated squad. When Ms. Wright came under pressure from some parents and school administration figures to make changes in the selections, she refused and was removed as coach of the squad.
She won her job back in an arbitration proceeding and settled a civil suit against the district for an undisclosed amount.
''Fairness and equity are big with me,'' she said of the incident, which she then went on to dismiss as insignificant alongside her work with students.
It was that work which always stood out, said William Librera, the state commissioner of education, who was principal of Columbia when Ms. Wright first came to the district. He called her a ''gifted teacher-educator'' who showed the same skills in the classroom that she showed on the hardwood.
Dr. Peter Horoschak, the superintendent of the district, said Ms. Wright went out of her way to give personal attention to her students and players and in the process looked at the ''development of the whole girl.'' Ms. Wright's players consistently score a combined 1000 and above on the SAT's, a feat that is the envy of coaches throughout the region.
Heather Freeman, now a 22-year-old senior at Seton Hall University in South Orange and one of Ms. Wright's former high school players, said the stress on academics was an important feature of the Columbia teams. But it was a place where she learned other important lessons.
''I knew I wasn't the best player, but she got me to find my niche and that turned out to be playing defense,'' Ms. Freeman said. ''Then she made me feel how important my role was to the team by pushing me to to do my best.''
Henrietta Nkechi Nwafili, the mother of Gayle Nwafili, a star on Ms. Wright's team before going on to play basketball this year at Providence College, said that she was not going to allow her 6 foot 2 inch daughter to play in high school, for fear she would lose focus on academics. But a visit by Ms. Wright, along with her own daughter, Jasmine, who was on the team, made her change her mind.
''I saw that she loves success and loves to see the girls excel academically,'' Ms. Nwafili said. ''She has become more than a coach and is intertwined with my family now. I know that what she thinks matters to my daughter. And when I call her with a problem she comes right over.''
Ms. Wright simply sees herself as a ''role player'' whose patient and steady work pays off for the team. She said it was ''a little puzzling'' to be ''doing what you have always done'' and suddenly receive recognition through the McDonald's coaching position and the McGuire award. Her husband has suggested that she parlay her coaching success into a post as an athletic director somewhere, but the role player in Ms. Wright resists.
''You know, I can't remember my daughter or any of my other kids coming home saying something good about an administrator or how an administrator had taught them something,'' she said. ''I think my calling is right here.''