Williams Jeter finds perfect fit in Wittenberg
To outsiders, it may have seemed to be only a matter of time before Tamika Williams Jeter — a two-time national champion with UConn in 2000 and ’02 and former WNBA player who’s worked as a college coach for 15 years — would take the reins of her own program, maybe a Power 5 school.
But something else was in store, something more special.
Williams Jeter was named the head women’s basketball coach and an associate athletic director of Wittenberg University, a Division III school in Springfield, Ohio, Friday afternoon. And she couldn’t have been more thrilled.
“It embodies everything I want to be,” Williams Jeter said of the program.
Following her storied UConn career (1998-2002), Williams Jeter played seven seasons in the WNBA before getting into coaching. Her career featured stops at Ohio State (twice), Kansas, Kentucky and Penn State. In a full-circle moment, the same person who drafted her to the Minnesota Lynx in 2002 was the one who recruited and hired her to come to Wittenberg this spring: Brian Agler, the school’s new athletic director and an alum.
Williams Jeter says Agler “[Saw] something in me that I didn’t see in myself ” when he drafted her, and even last month, she “thought he was crazy” to consider her for a head coaching job.
But this wasn’t just any head coaching job.
“This is super home for me,” said Williams Jeter, who grew up in Dayton. “Ohio State is home. Springfield, this Dayton area, this is super home. This is what made Tamika.”
Williams Jeter credited her parents, both teachers, for instilling in her a commitment to academic excellence, something that is particularly supported at a Division III institution like Wittenberg. She was also drawn to being able to impact the very community where she grew up and further the program’s “tradition of excellence,” calling Wittenberg “a hidden gem” whose winning ways she looks to build upon.
Williams Jeter even mentioned a goal to get Geno Auriemma and the Huskies to Springfield for a matchup.
“When somebody calls you and they say, ‘Tamika, you’re going to be allowed to grow and mold young minds, you’re going to be allowed to be impactful in your community and you going to help these student athletes win both on and off the court and be impactful to a university,’ these are all spaces I want to help this university and this team thrive in. And that’s why I picked Wittenberg. It’s that simple for me.
“It doesn’t matter the level, it’s the impact.”
Wittenberg doesn’t only get a collegiate champion and experienced coach, one who has experience helping rebuild programs like Ohio State. They get someone who, “When she enters the room, the energy level is going to go up,” Agler said. “And it’s happened here at Wittenberg ever since she’s been on campus.”
“I’m so happy he picked up that phone and he called me when he did, because it’s changed my life in so many ways,” Williams Jeter said.
Wittenberg finished a COVID-19 disrupted 202021 season with a 5-3 record playing an entirely North Coast Athletic Conference schedule. The program last appeared in the NCAA Tournament in 2015. After so much disruption and change over the last few years, Williams Jeter is hoping to bring some stability to a program that has a track record of winning championships in the NCAC.
“I just want our kids to play real hard ,” she said .“They have to have a big heart. They have to want to win. They have to want to do the little things. They have to get better every day, and they’ll hear that a lot.”
Her role won’t just be about the on-court product, though. Williams Jeter wants to demonstrate to her athletes and the community the type of people they can become, especially since most of her players will be from the very same area that she grew up.
“If I can do it, they can,” she said. “None of them are going to be pros, I get that, but they can still be pros at life. They’re very smart young women, and they’re going to inspire and be impactful and be influential to everybody around them. That’s my goal.