Former Opal Renae Garlepp on climbing the coaching ladder and overcoming fear

The FIBA Girls’s Asia Cup held in Sydney earlier this yr showcased the long run Australian Opals.

It additionally supplied 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 concern are earlier than you get there,” Garlepp stated.

“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 event — a loss meant they’d not progress to the Olympic Qualifying event, therefore lacking the Paris 2024 Olympic Video games.

“You could not purchase that have,” Garlepp stated.

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, girls now fill half of the top or assistant coach roles within the WNBL.

There are no less than ten girls teaching, together with three head coaches for the 23/24 season. All however one are former WNBL gamers.

Nevertheless, Garlepp’s two-year, full-time skilled teaching contract stays unusual for an assistant coach within the WNBL.

The job’s situations 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 stated it was Garlepp’s experience in participant improvement and constructing relationships that made her the proper candidate for the job.

“Really 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 embellished 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 closing, 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 Girls, profitable a gold medal.

The catalyst to a promising profession in basketball teaching got here in 2016, when shut buddy and former NBL participant, Ben Knight, invited Garlepp to educate a faculty group.

She has since been concerned with quite a few junior state groups and youth consultant groups.

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Garlepp partly attributes her success to the Basketball Australia Rising Coach Initiative, which gives coaches aged 20-36 years previous with skilled improvement, coaching and mentoring.

“I discovered it actually helpful, continually studying from completely different individuals about completely different subjects,” the 36-year-old stated.

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 nearly did not apply as a result of I did not assume I might get in,” she stated.

However her mom’s recommendation helped Garlepp assume in any other case.

“She stated ‘you possibly can’t say no to one thing out of concern’. It was one thing that she at all times [said that] simply pushed us out of our consolation zone.”

Garlepp added that “girls get of their far more” in relation to selling themselves for brand new alternatives and reaching their objectives.

Garlepp’s rise to NBL1 head coach

In 2022 Garlepp was promoted to move coach of the Norths Bears’ NBL1 Girls’s facet.

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 gained coach of the yr, however her group misplaced to a Lauren Jackson loaded Albury-Wodonga Bandits within the NBL1 East semi-final.

In preparation for the 2023 season, Garlepp assembled a proficient group with minimal sources in comparison with powerhouse golf equipment in NBL1 North and South.

“We sadly should not have a giant finances, so for what these gamers sacrificed to be part of one thing and obtain what we did collectively was tremendous particular,” Garlepp stated.

“So lots of them might 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, one in every of few in the whole NBL1 competitors.

They went on to win the NBL1 East Championship for 2023 and place second on the NBL1 Nationals, shedding to the Bendigo Braves who had been brimming with WNBL expertise.

It was Garlepp’s funding in creating 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 group,” McIntyre stated.

“She builds a group [where] the fashion of play is predicated on being powerful, selfless and celebrating everybody’s success.”

In response to Liz Mills, former head coach of the Kenyan Males’s Nationwide group 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 special degree.”

“[She] values the connection she has with the gamers, taking time to get to know and perceive them, and this enables her to construct nice rapport and to inspire them to their greatest talents,” Mills stated.

Supporting the WNBL to thrive

Forward of her WNBL teaching debut, Garlepp is trying ahead to studying extra concerning 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 stated.

“I feel it is what the women deserve.

“I’m actually excited to work in an surroundings the place excessive calibre gamers and other people wish to come and enhance day by 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 special strategy as a coach.

“I simply attempt to do an excellent job of what is in entrance of me. I take pleasure in being a head coach and I like the challenges that include it.

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 individuals in sport.

Jacinta Govind is a former basketball participant and now passionate advocate for girls’s basketball. She is the co-host of the ladies’s basketball podcast ‘Taking pictures the Breeze’ and is a WNBL commentator.