Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > June > 11 > Entry
“The next CJ coach…”
“There she is, the next CJ coach.”
That’s how Mike Raiff greeted Megan Duffy when they passed each other in the Chaminade Julienne gym earlier this week. The CJ athletics director said it like it was a joke, but I think there was some wishful thinking beneath that teasing delivery.
Duffy was a bit taken aback at first and admitted that while she wants to one day coach: “the timing isn’t quite right…I still want to play some basketball. I’m just not ready to give up the game yet.”
But underneath that sincere sidestep, I think there was wishful thinking on her part, as well.
Duffy — the former CJ hoops star who went on to Notre Dame, the WNBA and now is playing professionally in Europe — makes no bones about it. She wants to be a basketball coach and is acting as such this week as she’s become the face of the CJ girls summer basketball camp at the school.
While CJ assistant coach and longtime camp co-director Mandy Myers is doing much of the behind the scenes work — and former CJ stars Brandie Hoskins and Lindsey Goldsberry are high-profile mentors working alongside the current CJ girls players, who also act as instructors — Duffy is center stage.
She’s the animated and enthusiastic ringmaster, her Minnesota Lynx shorts and tennis shoes substituting for a top hat and tails. The way she’s handled the job — fully embracing the 63 youngsters taking part in the camp — has impressed Raiff:
“She’s really going to be something. I think you’re looking at the head coach of Notre Dame one day.”
Duffy offered to help out her alma mater — as did Hoskins and Goldsberry — when former girls head coach Marc Greenberg was arrested, and since indicted on 12 counts of using the internet to transmit obscene materials to minors, none of whom are said to be his players or girls from his camp. CJ fired him in mid-May and is currently searching for a new coach.
Raiff has finished his first round of interviews — meeting with 20 applicants from as far away as Texas — and said he has has two more rounds of queries until the school settles on a coach sometime in mid July.
He said he’s looking for just the right fit for CJ and — as you watched Duffy in action this week and then talked to her — you realize there can’t be too many people who would fill that bill better than she.
Although she lacks a coaching resume, she’s has worldly experience in the game, relates to the kids and is well-schooled in her hoops skills.
She was an Academic All American at Notre Dame, played for Minnesota and the New York Liberty in the WNBA and has played overseas for teams in Wales, Italy, Slovakia and Romania, which she just left a few weeks ago.
Talking briefly about her professional basketball travels, she told about “playing in the most famous arena in basketball” — Madison Square Garden, the Liberty’s home court — living on the Mediterranean Sea and playing for a team in Sicily, touring Russia and Poland with her Slovakian team and witnessing the passion of the Romanian fans, who’d pack the gym each game “and bang drums and chant the whole game like soccer fans.”
As for returning to the scaled-back WNBA this year, that will be difficult. The league has reduced roster sizes from 13 players to 11 and, if you combine that with the folding of the Houston Comets, the job market has shrunk from 182 spots in 2008 to 143 this season.
She’ll almost certainly head to Europe somewhere to play in the fall and her agent is addressing offers now. In the meantime, she’ll work another basketball camp in Columbus and help coach an Ohio AAU team that will be playing tournaments in various states.
“My window to play basketball is not going to last forever so I want to do that first,” she said. “But absolutely I want to coach and who knows? That may come sooner than later. Ultimately I want to be a college head coach, but I know I have to build a resume first. I have to pay some dues.”
Paying them at CJ could very well yield dividends to everyone.
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