The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Conversation with Clarissa: Part one
07.05.2006 | Women's Basketball
This spring, Clarissa Davis-Wrightsil, the most decorated and honored player in Women's Basketball history, had two significant life-changing happenings.
On April 29, she was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, and one month later on May 31, she then returned to her alma mater as an assistant basketball coach on Jody Conradt's staff. Prior to her appointment, Davis-Wrightsil had been the driving force behind bringing a WNBA team to her hometown of San Antonio. She served in the San Antonio Spurs Sports & Entertainment (SS&E) organization from 2000 through March of 2006, most recently as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for WNBA Silver Stars.
Davis-Wrightsil helped lead the Longhorns to the 1986 NCAA Championship and was a six-time National Player of the Year for Conradt's squad, earning the elite honors from Naismith twice (1986-87, 1988-89) while being named winner of the nation's top honor - the Margaret Wade Trophy - in 1988-89 as well. She also claimed 1988-89 National Player of the Year by the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, Champion and Mercedes-Benz. She then gained incredible experiences as a professional player in Europe (1989-1996, 1999) and in the United States, playing in the [now-defunct] ABL and in the WNBA for the Phoenix Mercury.
TexasSports.com caught up with the former 1992 USA Olympian prior to the hectic July recruiting period which finds the Longhorns coaches traveling across the country evaluating the nation's top talent.
In Part One of "Conversation with Clarissa", the former National Player of the Year and standout USA and European pro player discusses the reasons why she returned to the UT campus as assistant coach and what her experiences have taught her about coaching, building relationships, striving for excellence and becoming a champion.
On coming back to Texas ...
"It's exciting to be back, there's no doubt about that! I think back to a motto that I think holds true and that I hold close to me - when opportunity and preparedness meet, that is key in your life.
It was a blessing and very humbling for Coach (Conradt) to come offer me this position, because you never know where life takes you. Life literally has taken me from my growing up in San Antonio to here for college, from here to around the world, back to San Antonio to work in my foundation and in my role for the San Antonio Spurs and Silver Star organization, and back to here. Ironically, in the last 16 years I've traveled around the world, only to end up here - back at home at UT."
On her passions and how she will translate them into her new role as assistant coach ...
"I believe that you have to have a daily passion for all the things you do. Not only am I passionate about empowering, influencing and teaching young ladies, but I am passionate about The University of Texas and the success of this university.
This opportunity to coach, and me being prepared to move, met - which ended up bringing me back to the place that I call home - The University of Texas. The beauty of me being here is that I get it; I get what it takes to be a champion, and I care passionately about basketball, about UT and young women."
On her recent work at the prep level in the AAU basketball organization and on her foundation, TeamXpress, a sports-based mentoring organization ...
"Several years ago, one of the things my husband Jerald (Wrightsil) and I wanted to do was to give back to the community, so we started a non-profit foundation called 'TeamXpress'. It is a sports-based mentoring organization dedicated to empowering girls through sport by providing positive role models and encouraging literacy, goal-setting and community volunteerism, as well as creating opportunities for girls to participate in basketball on the high school and collegiate levels.
With TeamXpress, it was total involvement on my part. I formerly coached AAU teams, and during team practices, I would go in saying that it's going to be hard, it's going to be discipline, and we need to do what we need to do.
I am big on teaching....no, I am HUGE on that, and age is not a reason to not learn. I would teach these young girls pro moves, and believed that if they learned the basics early on, then they would be more proficient later. With my AAU team, we ran pro sets - they understood picks, screens, slips, and all those other things. I taught all the players every aspect because they were still prep age, so I didn't know how big they would get.
I definitely emphasized the idea that you don't get to where you get without work. It would have been a shame if, after all these years, I couldn't teach basketball to younger generations and give back to the community the same way it once gave to me. That was the basis for establishing TeamXpress."
On her coaching philosophy...
"Using positive feedback - that is my coaching approach. After working with prep players at the AAU level prior to my new position at Texas, I've learned that the key thing is showing that you care. If you care, then you can coach hard, because then the players know it's not personal. By caring, you have a rapport with each player, and the relationship is established; then, the road of development is smoother.
I firmly believe in being prepared and maximizing everything I have all the way around. Again, I am six years removed from being the person in the locker room listening to the coach. For me, it is always important that my words and my actions are consistent, because when you do that, then there is credibility and respect in many things.
The message that I send to our Longhorn players is that they'll find me very real. What you see is what you get, but I also believe in hard work and discipline. I'm going to love them, but I'm going to be on them if something isn't right. It's all about respect - respect the game, respect the school, respect the ability that you've been given."
On what this new UT position means to her and how she hopes to help the Longhorn players and build Texas back to a national championship contender...
"I just have to believe that every situation that I went through in my life was in preparation for this job.
I was blessed to have an extensive playing career which stretched from my days at Texas to playing in Europe and then coming back home to play in the ABL and the WNBA.
I want people to realize that I am only six short years out from being an athlete who was going to practice, doing the drills, doing in-season and off-season conditioning, studying the scouting reports, etc. - just six years ago, that was ME. I can relate to exactly what our student-athletes are going through each day.
After I got hurt at Texas (knee injury and reconstructive surgery), I had to relearn all the basics - how to walk, how to skip, how to move, how to run - and I started to understand the values of drills and repetition. When I learned their value, it expanded my game.
People who remember me playing remember me as a 6-1 post player, and now they want to see how that translates into what happens as a coach. I believe I not only have the ability to tell the players what to do, but also the ability to show them and demonstrate for them the aspects of the game.
Looking back, it is funny how things work out the way they do. I remember when I was overseas, I would have coaches ask for my advice and I'd give my suggestions, which trained me to be more confident in my leadership skills.
Everyone is driven by the desire to get better, and when you create an environment of learning and teaching, it's a fire that gets everyone excited because the players get hungry. That is the environment we want every day here at The University of Texas."
