When Shea Ralph asked around for advice on starting out as a head coach, someone told her that the first few months would feel like a tsunami.
“And it was true,” said Ralph, a UConn alum and longtime assistant in Storrs who is in her first year at the helm of the Vanderbilt women’s basketball program. “It’s like an enormous wave, and you’re just trying to figure out how to manage it, keep your head above water.”
Ralph’s first season has featured the typical highs and lows that rookie head coaches experience. After a strong start and some solid wins, Vanderbilt (12-15) looked like it could earn a WNIT bid prior to its current five-game losing streak. But wins and losses haven’t been on the forefront of Ralph’s mind; rather, it’s shaping her team into a tough out in SEC play while establishing the foundation for what she calls a “championship culture.”
She’s embracing all that comes with it along the way.
“It’s just been so neat to finally do this,” Ralph told The Courant recently. “I waited a long time, but this was absolutely the right place at the right time and the right opportunity. I’ve no doubt about it and I’m enjoying every minute.”
The Commodores have a respectable history of success, advancing to five Elite Eights and one Final Four (1993) under Jim Foster, though their most recent of 27 NCAA Tournament appearances came in 2014. When Ralph was hired in April 2021, her task was to revitalize a program that had not finished better than .500 during the tenure of her predecessor, Stephanie White, in one of the most competitive leagues in the country.
A UConn legend from her playing days (1996-2001) and an assistant on Geno Auriemma’s staff for 13 years, Ralph had long envisioned becoming a head coach one day, and a rebuild project in Nashville didn’t scare her away.
The leadership and resources Vanderbilt offers, Ralph said, created “the perfect situation for me to walk into.” She was “meticulous” in picking her staff, which includes her husband, Tom Garrick, a former assistant at Vanderbilt who most recently coached at UMass Lowell, as well as Kevin DeMille, who worked in various roles with the UConn women before Jen Rizzotti hired him as an assistant at George Washington.
Finding the right pieces
As Ralph and Garrick looked to add “self-starters [who] had high energy and were really passionate, great relationship people,” it was a “no-brainer” to her to hire former Husky Kyla Irwin, whom Ralph coached in Storrs from 2016-2020, as the program’s director of player development and community relations. Irwin had enrolled to start graduate school for occupational therapy at the time Ralph reached out to her, but she felt she couldn’t pass up the “opportunity of a lifetime.”
“Shea had such a huge impact on my development as a human being that I felt like it was only right to really figure this out and help build with her and continue growing as a person with her in my corner,” Irwin said.
“There’s no better teammate maybe in history. Her and Molly Bent were two of the best teammates that I’ve ever seen and been around, and I wanted that example in our office,” Ralph added. “I hired Kyla because she’s Kyla, because I knew whatever we would give her, she would 150% give it her best effort, that she would do it with passion and energy, and that she would be great to have around not only our staff, but our players.”
When Ralph arrived to Vanderbilt, she shifted her focus to getting buy-in from her new players. The program was coming off a tough season that had abruptly ended in mid-January following a 4-4 start (0-3 in SEC play). Then, three starters transferred prior to White’s ultimate departure.
In her first meeting with the team, Ralph says she was transparent about how she was going to run the program: She wasn’t going to cut corners when the long-term goal is “competing for championships [and to] have a championship program,” Ralph said. “In order to have that, you have to have a championship culture.”
To Ralph, the onus wasn’t on her new players to meet her standards as much as it was on her and the rest of the staff to earn the trust of the team. In her experience, there’s no better way to do that than to show investment in a player’s development not just as an athlete but as a holistic person. Irwin helps with that too, as she describes her role as working with players off the court to “be better people and get them involved with the community.”
“When you focus on building things the right way and laying the right kind of foundation for a healthy culture, investing in people, working day-to-day to just get a little bit better that day — because we came into something that really was starving for that — then all the winning takes care of itself,” Ralph said. “I learned that at UConn.”
Ralph appreciates that her team bought in when they didn’t have to — “that tells you the kind of kids that they are,” she said.
To Irwin, it’s just another example of the leader Ralph has long shown herself to be.
“I see every single day the energy and the time that she puts into everybody else’s life, that it’s really eye-opening to see how hard she works all the time,” Irwin said.
Seeing the returns
Ralph and company began to see the on-court return on that investment early in the season. After being picked last in the preseason SEC poll, Vanderbilt went toe-to-toe with Arizona, who advanced to the national title game last season before losing to Stanford, in the U.S. Virgin Islands in November, ultimately losing by two on a buzzer beater.
More than anything, the game demonstrated to her players that they are capable of battling with any team on any given day.
“In the locker room, the players are looking around like ‘Hey, we almost beat a team that no one on earth thought we would even have a shot at beating,'” Ralph said. “‘We can actually do something pretty special when we focus on ourselves and giving our best effort and getting better and improving and when we play with belief.'”
That fight was apparent when the Commodores, who developed a staunch defensive identity, upset Arkansas in their first SEC game. Vanderbilt has won just two other conference games since (versus Kentucky and Auburn) and is 3-10 in the league with three regular-season games remaining, but it’s had a number of tight contests including multiple against ranked teams. Six of their losses have come by single digits, including most recently their rematch against Kentucky, 69-64.
“She’s constantly talking and telling the girls about working hard every single possession, but not thinking about the next possession, focus on the possession right here,” Irwin said
“You’re gonna have to fight, and we’re gonna fight you back for every single point that you get and for every single win,” Ralph added.
Creating her culture
Establishing that will to fight and competitive spirit is the first step to Ralph, the foundation off which she envisions greater results will follow. Ralph may not be used to losing much in her UConn days, but she knows a culture transformation won’t happen overnight, and she’s ok with that.
“Obviously I want to win games, but I’m not going to sacrifice any of that to get a game here and a game there,” Ralph said. “I’m not going to do it. And the players know that, and I think they’ve started to see that when you operate that way, the end result is always a win.”
So with March around the corner, does Ralph feel like she’s through the tsunami just yet with her first year at the helm nearly at a close?
“No,” she admitted. “But I do feel like I’m in a lifeboat with others.”
But when a big wave is coming at you, Ralph continues, if you stand up and don’t do anything, you’ll get knocked over and absorb the full impact of what’s hitting you. Instead, if you put your head down and go underneath it, you can beat the worst of it and come out on the other end much better.
“We’ve kind of leaned into the fact that it’s uncomfortable and we’re embracing the hard part of it and we’re kind of diving in together so that we get underneath it, it’s not as bad as we thought and we come up with a win sometimes,” Ralph said. “And a lot of times we do. We’re getting better, and then we’re ready for the next wave.”
Alexa Philippou can be reached at aphilippou@courant.com
