Better Every Day
11/2/2021 12:30:00 PM | Women's Basketball
McCombs' commitment to excellence shines through on and off the court
By the time Caroline McCombs gathered her GW women’s basketball team at midcourt in the Charles E. Smith Center for their first official practice of the new season on Sept. 28, she’d already had a great day.
The first-year coach had enjoyed a lengthy conversation with Noelia Gomez in which she’d revealed that the former All-American from Spain would be inducted into the GW Athletics Hall of Fame. Then, she’d gotten word that alumna Jonquel Jones, a recent visitor back to Foggy Bottom, had been named WNBA MVP.
All the exciting news provided extra fuel on a day that had been circled on the calendar for months.
“These are the women that were once in your shoes,” McCombs told the group as they prepared to take the next step toward the 2021-22 campaign. “Anything you want to do is possible here.”
That sentiment has a lot to do with what brought McCombs to that moment.
Coming off a history-making NCAA run at Stony Brook, McCombs signed on to lead the Buff and Blue back in April, aiming to restore an accomplished program back to its place among the nation’s best.
The veteran leader believes all the elements – high-level athletics and academics in a great location in the heart of the nation’s capital – are in place to get there, and she and her staff have been hard at work in recent months to revamp the roster and lay the foundation for a team culture of excellence on and off the floor.
Amid the anticipation of a new era for the Buff and Blue, McCombs remains focused on the micro.
Her Pound the Stone mantra is all about a daily commitment to sweating the small stuff that will pay major dividends down the road, and that intentional approach has helped her find success at every stop along her coaching journey over the past two-plus decades.
“We’re going to keep it simple: We just want to get better every day,” McCombs said. “We’re going to accept the process, the challenge, the opportunities ahead of us, we’re going to have fun and we’re going to work really hard. That’s who we’re going to be."
FAMILY MATTERS
Born in D.C. and raised by John and Diana with stops in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Ohio, McCombs was the first of three in her tight-knit family to play college sports, heading to Youngstown State to play basketball before brother John went to Cornell for football and sister Leslie played soccer at Tulane.
She says her five-years-older sister Janice, who played high school basketball and tennis, was perhaps her biggest early influence in sports, though.
“Man, I used to love going to watch her games,” McCombs remembered. “I wanted to be on that team and do what she was doing.”
McCombs found a hoops family at Youngstown State, playing under Ed DiGregorio from 1994-98. Her coach won 319 games over 20 years leading the Penguins, highlighted by his team’s run to the second round of the 1998 NCAA Tournament behind McCombs’ all-around excellence, but he made just as much of an impact with the way he treated his student-athletes.
“If we needed something, he was there,” said McCombs, who was inducted into the YSU Hall of Fame in 2008 in recognition of a standout career in which she recorded 1,577 points, 493 assists, 473 rebounds and 236 steals. “That’s how he recruited me. He told my parents he would take care of me, and he did.”
McCombs has tried her best to carry DiGregorio's example throughout her coaching career, which started in 1999 as a graduate assistant at Valparaiso after a season playing professionally in the Czech Republic.
McCombs considers herself lucky to have had great mentors along the way, working for Keith Freeman (Valparaiso), Agnus Berenato (Pittsburgh), Joe McKeown (Northwestern) and Terri Williams-Flournoy (Auburn) before getting her first head coaching job at Stony Brook in 2014.
She was part of five NCAA squads as an assistant, including the first national tournament appearance in program history at Valpo and back-to-back Sweet 16 runs at Pitt in 2008 and 2009.
“For 15 years, I worked for really good people that allowed me to just continue to grow,” McCombs said. “Each and every coach that I worked for along my way, they were all very different but all really good people with really good values that reflected within their programs.”
A GW Athletics Hall of Famer who led the Buff and Blue to its greatest heights over a 19-year run from 1989-2008, McKeown had to push hard to recruit McCombs to his staff in 2010 and feels fortunate to have gotten two years working with "one of the brightest young coaches in our game."
He said McCombs separated herself with her tremendous enthusiasm on the court, work ethic and a commitment to recruiting that notably helped the Wildcats land Nia Coffey, who eventually became an All-American and WNBA first-round pick.
"I leaned on her a lot,” McKeown said. "She’s a great recruiter – and I mean relentless. Her scouting reports were great. She bought into our system and made our players better. She's one of those people who just has it.”
POUND THE STONE
Over seven years at Stony Brook, McCombs built a program with a clear identity centered around playing suffocating defense and getting out on the break to score on the other end. The Seawolves won 130 games, including at 15-6 mark last season when they rolled through the America East Conference tournament to earn the program’s first NCAA berth.
McCombs’ most successful seasons have come since embracing the Pound the Stone mantra. The phrase – borrowed from the title of a 2017 book by Joshua Medcalf – highlights the value of taking a daily approach to measuring success.
Since then, Medcalf’s book has been required reading for McCombs’ student-athletes, and its principles are never far from mind with a stone in the locker room and a travel-sized version for road trips.
Instead of big-picture goals, McCombs stresses the importance of committing to a process and focusing on what can be controlled day-to-day. She’s made sure her value-oriented, people-first philosophy is as much a staple of her program as the X’s and O’s of her defensive scheme or the mechanics of her fast break.
“I’ve grown so much over the last seven years in learning myself and how to lead and how to run a program,” McCombs said. “I’ve had a tremendous amount of fun along the way figuring things out, and it’s a lifelong process that I want to continue taking on. I wake up every day, and I just want to be the best that I can for everybody else around me.”
For McCombs, that self-improvement starts with a disciplined daily schedule.
She makes time for a daily prayer walk, yoga and reading. Each morning, she writes down a few principles and phrases that she wants to remember throughout the day like ‘Be Where My Feet Are,’ ‘Start Each Day with a Grateful Heart,’ or ‘Press Pause – Breathe – Smile.’
“For me, modeling the things I'm talking about is really important,” McCombs said. “I keep that piece of paper in my pocket every day, so when I think I’m having a moment, I can put my hand there and touch my little piece of paper and remind myself what I’m here for and what I want to stand for.”
For her new group, the Pound the Stone mindset has been a welcome addition to their hoops lexicon.
“I think Pound the Stone is the best way to start with a new coach,” junior Faith Blethen said. “Everyone’s talking about what will be or what could be, but every day, she’s bringing our attention to where we are and what we can do right now to keep things moving forward.”
A NEW ERA
McCombs was officially welcomed as the 11th head coach in program history during a press conference in the Smith Center on April 8. Director of Athletics Tanya Vogel introduced the program’s new leader to the Buff and Blue faithful, describing her as a proven winner and lifelong learner dedicated to the mastery of her craft.
In the months since then, Blethen has seen it in action, marveling at the coach’s plan to get the group physically and mentally prepared to play her preferred brand of basketball. The veteran guard has added strength, increased her quickness and begun to learn how to use those advantages within the new system.
“She’s super intentional about everything that we do,” Blethen said. “The drills we’re doing translate into the offense and defense we run. It’s never just a shooting drill. It’s, ‘This is a shot you will get out of this play in the offense.’”
Much of the early work during the summer focused on the defense, putting the fundamental pieces in place to eventually have an elite unit.
The work has been painstaking at times, but the progress has been evident to everyone around the program.
“Coach gets after it," said Taylor Webster, a D.C. native who transferred back home after spending her rookie season at UNC Wilmington. "She’s going to push you to limits that you never thought you’d be able to make.”
Off the court, it’s been an understandable challenge blending six returners with 10 newcomers on the roster. McCombs has followed a plan there, too.
The coach has been intentional about creating opportunities for her student-athletes, who hail from eight different states, D.C., Puerto Rico and Australia, to talk amongst themselves about topics beyond hoops.
She holds regular one-on-one meetings with everyone on the roster and gives them the space to speak about what’s on their minds, whether that’s how to guard the pick-and-roll or in Blethen’s recent-case, leads on landing an accounting internship for next summer.
As she begins her 23rd season coaching college basketball, McCombs remains just as passionate about the job, and the opportunity to lead a historic program in a place where the possibilities seem endless has only upped her excitement for what’s ahead.
“Basketball is my avenue to help young women achieve their dreams, whatever those may be,” McCombs said. “It’s what I enjoy doing. It’s not a job to me. It’s not going to work every day. It’s just what I want to do in my life.”