Every offseason we spend countless hours speculating about the coaching carousel, but what about coaching pipelines? In the last decade under head coach Lisa Bowerman’s leadership, Texas Woman’s University has become a sort of incubator for young coaching talent, including the likes of Garrett and Courtney McCool Griffeth and Stephen Hood, who now coach at LSU and Denver, respectively, and will be doing so this weekend at the 2023 NCAA national championships. But what is it about the small, Division II school in Denton, Texas, that attracts and develops such promising coaches?
For Bowerman, who took the reins from longtime head coach Frank Kudlac in 2012 after being an assistant coach for seven years, it all starts at the hiring process. By prioritizing character rather than college level coaching experience, she attracts individuals who take the responsibility of being entrusted with the lives of the athletes they coach just as seriously as the more technical aspects of coaching.
Reflecting on her hiring process she said, “The No. 1 thing that is at the top of my list is going to be their character—that they’re trustworthy. You can’t teach that. You can’t replace that with any level of experience or talent or technical knowledge”.
With this trust…
