Waiting in the Wings
Former Husky Kelly Raimon (Schumacher) at Mohegan Sun this week
For former UConn women’s basketball center Kelly (Schumacher) Raimon, getting into coaching was all about returning to the sport she loves most.
Raimon helped lead the Huskies to their second NCAA title in 2000 and later won two WNBA titles. And after playing professional volleyball following her WNBA career, Raimon knew she wanted to get back to basketball.
This summer, Raimon enters her second season as an assistant coach with the Dallas Wings. It’s her third WNBA assistant coaching stop in a career that was molded by her time at UConn along with her new passion for the sport and the people behind it.
“I think I look at things different, like it (coaching) shows me that there’s a difference from when I was playing,” Raimon said. “And it’s just opened up my thinking a little bit to times have changed and I’m open to that and people have changed. I think dealing with them in a leadership way, I’ve learned a lot.
“It’s building the relationships side with the players and also with the staff. … I just like to be on the court again, like that part is exciting.”
After graduating from UConn in 2001, Raimon was drafted No. 14 overall by the Indiana Fever. In her nine-year career, she played for four teams and won two WNBA titles — first with Phoenix in 2007 and a year later with the
Detroit Shock, which became the Tulsa Shock and later the Dallas Wings.
Raimon left basketball after the 2009 season and spent four years playing professional beach volleyball. She played on the AVP Tour and represented Team USA at the FIVB (Federation International Volleyball Beach) Tournament in 2013.
She momentarily resumed her basketball career in 2012 for a season in the EuroLeague but then returned to volleyball.
It was through volleyball that she began to miss basketball and simultaneously began thinking about coaching.
Unlike basketball, where coaches stand along the sideline and direct plays during games, beach volleyball coaches can’t always talk with players until timeouts when the action is paused.
“I had missed the sport of basketball, but I had also started thinking a little bit more strategically in game situations and in practices,” she said. “As volleyball players we go and do sessions with the coach but not many of the pro players actually have a coach with them at all times and they can’t coach you too much on the court. They can only tell you things in timeouts. Even in the Olympics, like the coaches are in the stands.”
Raimon played volleyball until 2016 when a handful of the professional leagues folded due to lack of funding.
The next year, she found herself living in Cleveland and worked as a volunteer on the staff of Ohio State women’s basketball coach
Kevin McGuff. She was a close friend of McGuff through her friendship with current Notre Dame coach Niele Ivey, who played under McGuff when he was an assistant coach at Notre Dame.
Raimon drove the two hours from Cleveland to Ohio State’ campus in Columbus a few times a week to help with scouting.
While with Ohio State, Raimon met then-Chicago Sky head coach Amber Stocks. Raimon later joined Stocks’ staff in Chicago as a team development coach and advance scout.
Raimon says it was through her experience with the Sky that she knew she was ready to be an assistant coach.
“I was able to do a lot of things when I was in Chicago because Amber put me in charge of different things as far as doing the personnel scouting and I did a lot of videos,” Raimon said. “I used the video software and the scouting software. It was new at the time, so I was in charge of teaching it to the assistants which was kinda funny but in the end, it really really helped me make that push so I was very confident in getting an assistant position.”
Her first taste of assistant coaching came in 2018 with the Las Vegas Aces under Bill Laimbeer.
“I loved it,” Raimon said. “I loved all the scouting, all
the strategy part of it and Bill was a great coach to work for because he gave his assistants, who were coach (Vickie) Johnson and I at the time, a lot of responsibilities.”
In Las Vegas, Raimon was hands-on with team meetings, scouting reports, creating defensive schemes and even pregame locker room huddles.
“I just loved the sense that he (Laimbeer) had his assistants really involved and so you learn a ton,” she said. “That’s my style. I really like being involved and it motivates me. … I think that shows how he’s created so many head coaches through his system because he gives them a great amount of responsibility and molds them.”
Raimon spent two seasons in Las Vegas before spending the 2020 season with the New York Liberty. That offseason, Dallas named Raimon’s former co-assistant coach in Las Vegas its new head coach. About four months later, Vickie Johnson hired Raimon to her staff in March 2021.
“We’re very close since we’ve worked together for a decent amount of time now and our relationship has just grown and so I think that we trust each other,” Raimon said. “She trusts me to continue to relay her message to the players.”
In Dallas, Raimon works closely with the post players
and helps create the team’s defense schemes.
“Definitely with her experience and being able to tell certain plays and being able to guide you with rebounding and getting into position, especially on defense, I think she’s really been helpful,” Dallas forward Satou Sabally said. “You know you can always pick her brain and she’s always available.”
Raimon says her time at UConn prepared her for coaching because of the program’s high standards on and off the court.
“Just being in the UConn basketball system, the commitment that you have to make to both the studies and also to the team itself, it takes a lot,” she said. “They kinda mold you into it, I know CD (Chris Dailey) has a lot to do with that as well because she’s very detail-oriented and she’s very strong on discipline and things like that and I think I’ve taken that role on a lot of the teams that I’ve been on because I’m super detail-oriented.
“I hold people responsible for things, I’m constantly in their ear in a sense where then they expect that. I think it has prepared me a lot. It wasn’t easy to be a student-athlete and to also balance sports, but I think in the end it really pays off.”