Elaine Elliott has spent the last four years helping Kim Smith and Shona Thorburn bloom into the elite players they are today. Thousands of hours guiding them through scrimmages, running drills, maximizing their strengths and offering general inspiration have molded the two women into professional ballplayers.
So it’s not surprising that Elliott was there in person, feeling “proud as a parent” when her two All-Americans met for the first time in WNBA action.
Smith’s Sacramento Monarchs took on Thorburn’s Minnesota Lynx on June 29 and Elliott and assistant coach Carolyn DeHoff flew to Sacramento to watch the former Utes realize the ultimate basketball dream.
Coaching players to the next level has been “one of the highlights” of Elliott’s 23-year career as head coach of the U’s women’s basketball program-a run in which she has posted only one losing season.
Last season, the Utes rode a wave of confidence into the Elite 8, narrowly missing a spot in the Final Four after losing to the eventual champion Maryland in an overtime heartbreaker.
Seeing her basketball offspring mature and develop as they have made their way onto the big stage has been a treat for the veteran coach. “I love watching their progress,” she said.
Becoming professional athletes has been a “mixed” experience for the rookies, who are going through a period of adjustment as they try to establish themselves as pros, Elliott said. Everything is suddenly new: new cities, new friends and new roles on their teams. In college, they were go-to gals-starters who played nearly 40 minutes a game-but now they must prove themselves once again among the best female hoopsters in the world. Being young and inexperienced, playing time has not been abundant for the former Utes.
Smith scored two points in seven minutes in the Monarchs’ win over the Lynx, while Thorburn got into the game for four minutes.
“They’re starting over again,” Elliott said, explaining that it takes time to adjust to life in the pros, especially after shifting over to the pro game almost immediately after graduation because of the WNBA’s unorthodox summer schedule. Elliott’s advice? Be patient. Elliott said she could also remind them to “work really hard,” but knowing Kim and Shona, why waste her breath?
As for bringing more top talent into the program, the future looks bright. High-level female players with lofty aspirations now have WNBA dreams to consider when choosing which college to play for. A player’s quest to find the right program that will give her the best possible shot at making the pros has now become an important factor in the women’s recruiting game, just as it has been in the men’s game for so long. Elliott hopes that talented players will take note of the accomplishments of Smith and Thorburn and see the U as a launching pad to the next level.
It’s not yet time for the next crop of freshmen to commit to schools, so it’s still too soon to know what impact last season’s individual and team success will ultimately have on the kind of talent the U will be able to bring in. But it seems clear that all the good press that the team has garnered over the past few months has raised the nation’s consciousness of the Utah women’s basketball program.
While Smith and Thorburn start over in the professional ranks, Elliott will start over when the team begins holding regular practices in October. “You start over every year,” Elliott said. “This is part of college athletics. The new generation has an opportunity to make their mark.”
The confidence with which the 2005-2006 Utes finished the season after making their impressive run in the NCAA tournament will not necessarily carry over into the coming season. It “will have to grow from other sources,” Elliott said.
Projected starters Morgan Warburton, Joh-Teena Filipe, Heidi Carlsen and Jessica Perry are at the core of the new generation. After playing supporting roles behind Smith and Thorburn, these four will need to step out of the shadows and become the next leaders of the team.
Last season’s 27-7 record, however, will be tough to match. The Utes lost their top three scorers to graduation. None of the remaining players scored in the double digits last year.
Perry, a 6-foot-3 junior from Ontario, Can., will likely be looked to for grabbing a lion’s share of the team’s rebounds and also to fill some of the scoring void left by Smith’s absence. Perry averaged 7.1 points and 5.0 rebounds last season. The two-year starter spent last summer playing for Canada in the Junior World Championships in Tunisia. Carlsen and Warburton, who averaged 6.0 and 5.9 points per game respectively, are expected to be key contributors as well.
Elliott looks to returning seniors Carlsen, Shauna Brouillard and Camie Oakey for off-the-court leadership as motivators and examples of a winning attitude and a disciplined work ethic.