Duke’s Kara Lawson has been named the following head coach of the US girls’s basketball staff.
Lawson, who was an assistant coach on the 2024 gold-medal-winning nationwide staff and a gold medalist as a participant in 2008, will lead the U.S. in any respect main competitions main into the 2028 Summer season Video games in Los Angeles.
“To win a gold medal as a participant was superb, and one of many earliest targets that I set out once I was younger,” Lawson instructed ESPN. “I believe that’s what drives you as a result of you know the way nice that feels and also you need the gamers you coach to expertise that. You get to have this everlasting reminiscence in your sport and so the aim is to attempt to assist them create that for themselves on the completely different world occasions.”
Lawson takes over the nationwide staff from Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who guided the ladies to their eighth consecutive gold medal on the Paris Olympics in 2024.
Whereas the US’ dominance on the worldwide degree is unparalleled — America has received 60 consecutive Olympic video games — Lawson is aware of firsthand how shut the remainder of the world is to closing the hole.
Lawson was an assistant on Reeve’s workers because the U.S. defeated France by the slimmest of margins, 67-66, within the Paris gold-medal recreation, when Gabby Williams stepped on the 3-point line as she hit what would have been a game-tying 3-pointer on the finish of regulation.
“The worldwide recreation has by no means been extra aggressive on the ladies’s facet,” Lawson mentioned. “And I believe the roster for the U.S. girls has all the time been essentially the most aggressive roster to make. I’d argue in any sport, it is the toughest roster to make. However this could be the toughest of the toughest roster to make. As a result of there’s so many good veterans which have received lots for our nation. And there is an incredible group of younger gamers which are already competing at this degree.”
Lawson coached plenty of these youthful gamers as a part of USA Basketball’s 3-on-3 applications each at the highschool degree and when it debuted as an Olympic sport on the Tokyo Summer season Video games in 2021.
A few of the younger gamers she labored with then embody the Dallas Wings’ Paige Bueckers, Indiana’s Aliyah Boston, the Los Angeles Sparks’ Rickea Jackson and Kelsey Plum, the Atlanta Dream’s Allisha Grey, and the Las Vegas Aces’ Jackie Younger.
“There’s nothing just like the strain of massive competitors, and so I like the truth that I’ve the expertise, the Olympic expertise of a gold-medal recreation and semifinal recreation and the strain of being the overwhelming favourite and having to return by,” Lawson mentioned. “Having been by that as a participant, and because the 3-on-3 head coach, and an assistant final 12 months in Paris, I believe anytime you get reps on the highest degree, it is worthwhile.
“And, being in these battles with these high-quality gamers means you form of have a really feel for his or her aggressive fibers and what makes them tick. Hopefully they really feel a little bit of comfortability with me as properly.”
Lawson was chosen for this place by Sue Chook, the Olympic gold medalist and Corridor of Famer who was named the primary managing director of the USA Basketball girls’s nationwide staff in Might. On this new function, Chook is chargeable for selecting each the teaching workers and the gamers for worldwide tournaments.
For many of their lives, Chook and Lawson have been pleasant rivals. First as standout guards rising up within the Northeast, then at UConn and Tennessee, then within the WNBA with Seattle and Sacramento, and at last as teammates on the 2008 Olympic staff.
“We have recognized one another since we have been 9 years outdated,” Lawson mentioned of Chook. “And we have all the time had a wholesome respect for one another.”