Basketball: Coach wins boys' respect

by PETER JESSUP

The boys in the Hawkes Bay team haven't directed any sexist banter at their new coach Kirsten Daly, the first woman to command a national league men's team.

"I give them a bit of cheek but they don't come back," says Daly. "They call me 'coach'.

"They have shown incredible respect and reacted really positively to it."

Daly was a last-gasp appointment after 13-year Tall Black coach Keith Mair took the job as part of a portfolio with Sport Hawkes Bay, but then accepted a better offer as chief executive of Basketball England.

Daly, player/coach for the Hawks women's team last year, was at first called in to assist with pre-season fitness and skills work.

"Making them throw up on the training track is easy," she says, admitting she initially had some doubts when asked to make the step up.

But as the search for a coach continued without a stand-out candidate, it was player pressure that turned management's thinking to appointing Daly.

With a heritage that includes parents who both played in the national league, dad Craig coaching the Hawks in 1983 and mother Donnette appointed the first-ever female referee in the national men's league, she appears well qualified.

Daly, 33, began her international career as an 18-year-old at Colorado State University, where she played for eight seasons. She was Tall Ferns captain at the Sydney Olympics and as such commands the respect of her players, who will include Tall Black Paul Henare as captain when he returns from Belgrade.

She has long been involved in second division coaching clinics and with women's and age group representative teams. Asking around about her best attributes generates an almost universal response - competitiveness.

She'll have access to Tall Black coach Tab Baldwin as mentor and it's an approach Baldwin will appreciate.

Describing her commitment, Daly points to her experience with the women Hawks last year.

The women drove her mad, she says, because they wouldn't fight hard enough.

"They weren't intense enough for my liking."

She is equally tough on the men who finished with a five-win, 11-loss record, not because of lack of talent but rather "their defence was appalling - they let people get easy lay-ups and that takes the heart out of a team, it affected their harmony".

Signed along with Henare are fellow Tall Black guard Paora Winitana, his younger brother Joe, import Pero Mastivich from Australia, Roger McPherson and Scott Slater returning from last season, and Daly's younger brother Aidan, who was with Wellington. Included amongst promising back-up is 2m Lance Telstra, 20, of Tauranga, a second division player last season.

"The Hawks were disappointing last year. The goal this season is top-five and there is absolutely no reason why we can't make it," says Daly.

Watching her mother referee the men's national league finals was an amazing experience for a young girl, says Daly, but taking on the Hawks job is not an attempt to match that achievement.

"I sort of fell into it."

She had been offered the job with the Wellington Saints in 2001 but an offer of promotion to deputy principal of Taradale High School came at the same time.

Demands on her time now seem sure to increase, and the offers are likely to keep coming, rumour is strong that she will be asked to assist new Tall Ferns coach Carrie Graf.

Daly probably won't be able to resist. There's every prospect the Ferns will go to the 2004 Athens Olympics. So she'll doubtless say "yes" when asked if she'll join Graf.