The FIBA Ladies’s Asia Cup held in Sydney earlier this yr showcased the longer term Australian Opals.
It additionally offered a glimpse of our rising teaching expertise. Alongside WNBL Championship coach Shannon Seebohm was former Opal Renae Garlepp.
Garlepp was “completely shocked” when she was supplied a training function with the Opals. The appointment got here with a combination of nerves and pleasure, however that quickly evaporated.
“The preliminary nerves and worry are earlier than you get there,” Garlepp mentioned.
“I felt extra snug because it went on.”
Garlepp and the Opals confronted a do-or-die scenario in opposition to South Korea on the match — a loss meant they might not progress to the Olympic Qualifying match, therefore lacking the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games.
“You could not purchase that have,” Garlepp mentioned.
“You be taught a lot from gamers and coaches [in terms of] how they deal with themselves in these high-stake conditions.”
Now, Garlepp has been introduced because the Sydney Flames assistant coach; a win for feminine illustration within the WNBL and one other milestone so as to add to her already excellent profession.
With Garlepp’s appointment, ladies now fill half of the pinnacle or assistant coach roles within the WNBL.
There are at the very least ten ladies teaching, together with three head coaches for the 23/24 season. All however one are former WNBL gamers.
Nonetheless, Garlepp’s two-year, full-time skilled teaching contract stays unusual for an assistant coach within the WNBL.
The job’s circumstances are sometimes opaque, with pay charges and anticipated working hours various broadly throughout the league.
Her groundbreaking cope with the Flames means Garlepp not must juggle a number of teaching roles, as many others do.
CEO of the Sydney Kings and Sydney Flames Chris Pongrass mentioned it was Garlepp’s experience in participant improvement and constructing relationships that made her the proper candidate for the job.
“She’s a celebrity coach,” Pongrass mentioned.
“Actually we’re going to be arduous pressed to not see her as a head coach on this league, I feel in a few years time. She’s a stud.”
Stepping out of the consolation zone
Higher identified in basketball circles as Renae Camino, Garlepp boasts a adorned taking part in profession that features WNBL Rookie of the Yr in 2004/05 and two WNBL championships with Adelaide Lightning (2007/08) and Bendigo Spirit (2012/13).
The Wollongong native nonetheless holds the report for many factors scored in a WNBL grand ultimate, totalling 32 factors for the Lightning in opposition to the Sydney Flames (2007/08).
Garlepp donned the inexperienced and gold on the FIBA U19 and U21 World Cups, and for the Opals within the 2007 FIBA Oceania Championship for Ladies, profitable a gold medal.
The catalyst to a promising profession in basketball teaching got here in 2016, when shut pal and former NBL participant, Ben Knight, invited Garlepp to teach a faculty crew.
She has since been concerned with quite a few junior state groups and youth consultant groups.
Garlepp partly attributes her success to the Basketball Australia Rising Coach Initiative, which offers coaches aged 20-36 years previous with skilled improvement, coaching and mentoring.
“I discovered it actually helpful, continuously studying from completely different folks about completely different matters,” the 36-year-old mentioned.
On the time, Garlepp was an assistant coach for state and youth league groups and was but to step right into a head teaching function. She noticed this as a barrier to making use of for the initiative.
“I virtually did not apply as a result of I did not suppose I might get in,” she mentioned.
However her mom’s recommendation helped Garlepp suppose in any other case.
“She mentioned ‘you may’t say no to one thing out of worry’. It was one thing that she all the time [said that] simply pushed us out of our consolation zone.”
Garlepp added that “ladies get of their far more” relating to selling themselves for brand spanking new alternatives and attaining their objectives.
“We expect we’re not ok or certified sufficient, worry all the time involves the entrance, so I verify myself to see if I do not need to do one thing out of worry.”
Garlepp’s rise to NBL1 head coach
In 2022 Garlepp was promoted to move coach of the Norths Bears’ NBL1 Ladies’s aspect.
That got here after two consecutive years – and two coach of the yr awards – main the North Bears within the NSW Waratah Youth League.
In her first yr as Bears head coach, she once more received coach of the yr, however her crew misplaced to a Lauren Jackson loaded Albury-Wodonga Bandits within the NBL1 East semi-final.
In preparation for the 2023 season, Garlepp assembled a gifted crew with minimal sources in comparison with powerhouse golf equipment in NBL1 North and South.
“We sadly should not have a giant price range, so for what these gamers sacrificed to be part of one thing and obtain what we did collectively was tremendous particular,” Garlepp mentioned.
“So lots of them may have gone and performed at different golf equipment or interstate for extra money or greater roles, [so] I’m really grateful to all of them for making that sacrifice.”
She was supported by an all-female teaching roster consisting of former NBL1 and WNBL gamers, certainly one of few in all the NBL1 competitors.
They went on to win the NBL1 East Championship for 2023 and place second on the NBL1 Nationals, dropping to the Bendigo Braves who have been brimming with WNBL expertise.
It was Garlepp’s funding in growing native expertise that got here to fruition on the Norths Bears.
The last word competitor
Fleur McIntyre, lead assistant of the Sydney Kings within the NBL, assisted Garlepp on the Australian Junior Championships in 2023.
She believes Garlepp is the “final competitor”.
“She accepts nothing lower than dedication to the groups and their objectives [and she] treats everybody pretty and equally throughout her crew,” McIntyre mentioned.
“She builds a crew [where] the type of play is predicated on being robust, selfless and celebrating everybody’s success.”
Based on Liz Mills, former head coach of the Kenyan Males’s Nationwide crew and present coach of Bangui Sporting Membership within the Basketball Africa League, Garlepp is ready to “deliver her personal expertise as an elite participant”, “permitting her to grasp the gamers on a unique degree.”
“[She] values the connection she has with the gamers, taking time to get to know and perceive them, and this permits her to construct nice rapport and to inspire them to their finest skills,” Mills mentioned.
Supporting the WNBL to thrive
Forward of her WNBL teaching debut, Garlepp is trying ahead to studying extra in regards to the day-to-day lives {of professional} feminine athletes, an expertise vastly completely different to her personal.
“Basketball is their job [and that’s] extremely completely different to what I skilled as a participant,” she mentioned.
“I feel it is what the ladies deserve.
“I’m actually excited to work in an surroundings the place excessive calibre gamers and other people need to come and enhance each day.”
When requested about her aspirations to be a WNBL head coach sooner or later, Garlepp is fast to shift the dialog.
Whereas she says she had a “clear imaginative and prescient” of her profession path when she was a participant, she is taking a unique strategy as a coach.
“I simply attempt to do a very good job of what is in entrance of me. I take pleasure in being a head coach and I really like the challenges that include it.
“However on the finish of the day you might be there simply to assist everybody round you thrive inside themselves.”
The 2023/24 WNBL season tips-off Wednesday November 1.
ABC Sport has partnered with Siren Sport to raise the protection of ladies and non-binary folks in sport.
Jacinta Govind is a former basketball participant and now passionate advocate for ladies’s basketball. She is the co-host of the ladies’s basketball podcast ‘Capturing the Breeze’ and is a WNBL commentator.
