Caitlin Clark had just one head coach at Iowa—the highly respected Lisa Bluder. Weeks after Clark’s first season in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, she already has her second head coach as a pro.
The Fever hired Stephanie White on Friday, who returns as head coach nearly a decade after a six-year stint with the team, which included four years as an assistant and two years as head coach.
White served as an assistant coach under Lin Dunn, now a Fever senior advisor, during the team’s only championship run in 2012. She led the franchise back to the Finals in 2015 as a head coach. She also played for the team from 2000 to 2004, though she missed the 2002 season due to injury.
She spent the last two years as the coach of the Connecticut Sun, the team that eliminated the Fever in the 2024 playoffs, but the two sides parted ways Monday. White had a year remaining on her contract.
Sun president Jen Rizzotti told ESPN the two sides parted on “good terms” and White, a native of Indiana, departed for reasons beyond basketball.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday, following the Fever firing of head coach Christie Sides, that White had narrowed her search to the Fever and Chicago Sky. White, an Indiana native, started her WNBA coaching career with the Sky.
White inherits a Fever roster that finished 20–20 last season and qualified for the playoffs for the first time since 2016, her last season as head coach. The role comes with a national spotlight given the presence of Caitlin Clark, the league’s biggest draw, and lofty expectations due to the early success of Clark and 2023 No. 1 pick Aliyah Boston.
Following Clark’s WNBA debut in May against the Sun, Clark spoke glowingly of White, who worked as a basketball analyst for ESPN and the Big Ten Network and called many of the star guard’s games at Iowa.
“I just think she has a really great basketball mind. I think she’s done a great job calling college games. … She’s been a trailblazer, honestly. I think she’s always been somebody that’s been supportive of my game. It’s been fun to talk to her at shootarounds throughout my college career,” Clark said.
WNBA Coaching Carousel
White’s signing closes the door on one of seven coaching vacancies across the WNBA—which is more than half of the league, even when including the expansion Golden State Valkyries.
The six teams missing head coaches are the Los Angeles Sparks, Sky, Dallas Wings, Atlanta Dream, Washington Mystics, and Sun. The Sun are the only team without a coach that finished last season with a winning record.
Front Office Sports explored the possible reasons for the mass head-coach firings across the league, which could be related to the league’s unprecedented growth and the money teams are expecting to receive from the $2.2 billion media-rights deal. Read more here.
