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Message: [QUOTE="Dokey, post: 3450642, member: 9636"] Oddly enough, I was addressing this very issue yesterday in my Facebook review of former ESPN journalist Kate Fagan’s The Reappearing Act. That book primarily discusses her struggles coming out lesbian while surrounded by Christian homophobic teammates but the early chapters deal with why she almost quit basketball. Recruited to the then national powerhouse Colorado, Fagan redshirted her first year while recovering from an injury. When she returned next year to the team, she was miserable and told herself she hated basketball and so went to inform her coach of her decision. That coach was Hall of Farmer Ceal Barry who, with apologies to Geno, Pat, Tara, Muffet, etc., I consider the best coach in the women’s game. And it was how she handled Kate Fagan that explains her greatness. When Barry recruited this New York player, she was fooled by Kate’s brash, in your face attitude, and so pushed her relentlessly in practice, jumping on every mistake. When Kate announced she was quitting, Barry immediately saw that she had mistaken the mask for the real woman behind it. Give me two weeks, Barry said. I have been coaching you all wrong. At the next practice, Kate was late in setting her feet to take a charge. In a game that would be a foul. Barry blew her whistle. Kate waited for the inevitable criticism. Instead, what Barry said was, “That’s exactly the kind of effort we need more of.” Kate would go on to play and eventually start for Colorado until she graduated four years later. For reasons I can only guess at, Barry retired from coaching at age 49 shortly after Kate left with 510 victories. She’s still at Colorado as associate athletic director in a department that just saw another member inducted into the Hall of Fame. Sadly, the Colorado program deteriorated after Barry left but this year is showing resurgence. No one is more pleased that Ceal Barry, the coach who tailored her coaching to the player, not the other way around, and, in my book, is aces. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach

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