There are flashes in life when a dream transforms into reality in a matter of seconds.
For newly-minted Duke assistant coach Wanisha Smith, that instance came in a place far from the hardwood she has played and coached on for decades. Instead, she learned news that would change her life as a customer in a nail salon.
“Duke is home. Eventually I’m going to end up back there,” Smith recalled in a Twitter video post May 3. “I don’t know how it’s going to happen. But it’s going to happen.”
In the midst of a discussion about career goals with a co-worker, the Cincinnati native received a call that encompassed the sentiment felt five seconds prior.
Duke head coach Joanne P. McCallie was on the other end of the life-changing phone call as Smith’s former coach offered her an assistant coaching job.
The coaching changes
After the departures of associate head coach Hernando Planells and assistant coach Rene Haynes, McCallie had two openings on her staff. On May 3, McCallie announced the two coaches who will be replacing Planells and Haynes would be Smith and Jim Corrigan, the team’s special assistant since Dec. 2017 and fellow Duke graduate.
But the coaching staff was not complete at the time, as the special assistant position was left open for almost two more months. Then the calendar flipped to July and the team announced that McCallie’s former player, Keturah Jackson, would join the program in Corrigan’s previous role.
‘Let’s rock and roll’
A highly-ranked guard, Smith concluded her high school career with a trip to the McDonald’s All-American game and earned a pair of regional awards—Washington Post Metro Player of the Year and Gatorade Maryland Player of the Year.
That successful high school career led Smith to Durham under the direction of former long-time Duke head coach Gail Goestenkors. In her first season, Smith started 35 games and averaged 10.9 points on an Elite Eight team.
Smith’s next season featured a trip to the Final Four, where the Blue Devils defeated LSU before falling to Maryland in the title game.
Smith’s junior year culminated with a Sweet 16 appearance before Goestenkors left to become the head coach at Texas. McCallie was hired and has been leading the program ever since.
“Wanisha was my first senior at Duke,” McCallie said. “Can you imagine what it was like with a beloved coach leaving and here comes a new coach?”
When a coach leaves a program and a new one is hired, the chemistry between the players and the coaches has the potential to lead to a less than desirable final result.
But Smith wasn’t going to let that happen.
“’It’s my senior year. Let’s rock and roll,’” McCallie recalls Smith telling the team that year.
The importance of having a veteran like Smith on her first team was critical to the success of the 2007-08 season. Without Smith, who started all 30 games she played that year, McCallie doesn’t believe the team would have advanced all the way to the Sweet 16.
After a senior campaign that capped off a storied career, Smith graduated with a degree in women’s studies and was drafted in the second round of the 2008 WNBA Draft by the New York Liberty.
A dream come true
Smith's professional playing career was brief, spending eight seasons as an assistant coach at Longwood before becoming an assistant at Towson.
Ten years after her first assistant job, she found herself getting her nails done when that phone call from McCallie fast forwarded the return to her college home.
“I am elated every day I wake up…. It’s Duke excellence from top to bottom,” Smith said about her return. “[A place] where you can come and be your absolute best.”
Smith has enjoyed working with the guards—alongside fellow assistant Sam Miller—as each and every day provides an opportunity for her players to improve. McCallie also noted that she has the ability to coach the post players with her skillset.
In practices thus far, Smith has noticed one quality that she shares with everyone on the team.
“They’re hungry to be the absolute best they can be,” Smith said. “Every single one of them has that fire that I had.”
In the lone year that she spent with McCallie as her head coach, Smith learned about who her coach was as a person, outside of the X’s and O’s. Smith ultimately gravitated back towards McCallie because of her head coach’s desire to develop student-athletes on and off the hardwood.
“She’s just a great human who really cares about more than just the athlete and I think a lot of people can see that,” Smith said about McCallie.
Now as a member of the Blue Devil staff, Smith can utilize her four-year Duke experience while recruiting future classes. At the high schools that she will frequent in her role, Smith will boast her beloved blue and white attire with the branded Duke “D,” which she believes stands for greatness.
The next time Smith walks into a nail salon, she won’t have to think about what her path back to Duke could look like, because she’s already “home.”
Editor's note: this is a part of The Chronicle's 2019-20 Duke women's basketball preview, the rest of which can be found here.
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