Stephanie White didn’t always want to be a coach. In fact, she revealed on Sue Bird’s podcast “Bird’s Eye View” that she wanted to be a pilot while she was in college. Then, she made the WNBA and played professional basketball from 1999 to 2004, suiting up for the Sting and the Fever. Just about 20 years after her last season of playing in the WNBA, Stephanie White is one of the top head coaches in the league and played a pivotal role in the Fever’s surprise run to the semifinals.
While on “Bird’s Eye View,” White also gave credit to the college coach who encouraged her to try her hand at coaching even while she was still playing in the WNBA.
“While I was playing with Indiana, I had my fourth or fifth surgery, and a woman by the name of Tracy Roller, who was coaching at Ball State, asked me. She said, ‘Hi, I have a coaching position. I didn’t know if you’d like to try your hand at coaching,’” White said.
She also added, “I’ll never forget just the first moment that I stepped foot on the floor in practice. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is where I’m meant to be.’ I feel like my advantage—I was never fast, I was never athletic—was always skill set, work ethic, and IQ.”
Stephanie White coached under Tracy Roller in 2003-2004
Tracy Roller coached Ball State’s women’s team from 2001 to 2008. Over that time, she accumulated a 118-73 record. Roller gave Stephanie White her first shot at a coaching role in 2003. After one season, White took on an assistant coaching position at Kansas State. In 2005, she moved on to Toledo, and two years later to the WNBA. White acted as an assistant coach for the Sky and the Fever before getting her first shot at a head coaching job in 2015.
A year later, she moved back to the college ranks as the head coach for Vanderbilt’s women’s basketball team. It wasn’t until 2023 that she returned to the WNBA, leading the Connecticut Sun on several deep playoff runs and being named 2023 Coach of the Year. White left Connecticut to return to her home state and coach the Fever for a second time.
Stephanie White also credited Lin Dunn with preparing her for a head coaching role
After Roller gave White her first coaching position, White learned from many other people, most notably former Fever head coach Lin Dunn.
“One of the best opportunities I had was coming back to Indiana and working for Lin Dunn. Lin put me in positions in practice every day, in her office every day, where we were having conversations about situations and substitutions and she challenged me,” White said.
She added, “She in particular put me in positions to understand what was going to be necessary at the next level for me. And moving that one seat is a big difference.”
Roller, Dun, and everyone else White learned from obviously prepared her well, and the Fever already reaped the benefits of her coaching talent. Indiana’s season could have been over quickly when Caitlin Clark suffered an injury. The team also could have easily given up once Aari McDonald, Sydney Colson, and Sophie Cunningham suffered season-ending injuries. Instead, the Fever kept pushing, upset the Dream in the first round of the playoffs, and pushed the Aces to five games in the semifinals. White established an incredible culture and atmosphere in her first season with this iteration of the Fever.