Ex-WNBA player Tamara Moore named coach of men’s junior-college team
Former WNBA player Tamara Moore just joined a very exclusive club. Currently, she’s the only one in it.
Moore has been hired as the men’s basketball head coach at Mesabi Range College, a community college in Virginia, Minnesota, according to ESPN. She will also reportedly work as the school’s softball head coach.
The hiring reportedly makes Moore the only female head coach of a men’s collegiate program in the country. Mesabi Range competes in the National Junior College Athletic Association.
From ESPN:
“Now, it’s time for me to show you guys and show people that women are just as knowledgeable as men to coach the game,” said Moore.
Tamara Moore spent six seasons in the WNBA. Now, she’s looking to show she belongs in the men’s side of college basketball. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)
After a first-team All-Big Ten career at Wisconsin, Moore spent six seasons in the WNBA. She bounced frequently around the league, playing for seven different teams in her career then playing overseas.
Moore was previously working as the girls’ basketball coach at Edison High School in Minneapolis, and has also reportedly owned a semi-pro men’s team. This isn’t the first time she’s made history, being the first woman to compete in a Minneapolis inner-city, all-star game that did not have a women’s game.
Moore told ESPN that coaching men isn’t an issue for her, and that she hasn’t had to deal with questions about how such players will respond to her:
“I can use my recruiting calls in this process as an answer to that question: I didn’t even get that question once,” said Moore, who will lead a program that finished 6-19 this season. “My résumé speaks for itself.”
Moore obviously isn’t alone as a woman coaching men’s basketball, as the NBA currently features several female assistants. That group is headlined by the San Antonio Spurs’ Becky Hammon, who currently works as a top assistant to Gregg Popovich.
At the collegiate level, Maine’s Edniesha Curry is the only known woman coaching at the Division I level.
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