Head basketball coach must wear multiple hats

Sports Odds and Ends

Angel Whetstone is the 13^th head coach in Madison College (WI), women’s basketball history. When she was hired in May, Whetstone joined University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Marisa Moseley as the city’s only two Black women head college coaches.

“This is my tenth season of coaching some type of basketball,” Whetstone recently told the MSR. She was the video and creative content coordinator at Missouri State for a year, where she helped the Bears women’s team reach the WNIT and finish 20-12.

Her coaching experience in collegiate athletics includes SIU-Edwardsville basketball operations director (two years), which also included brief stints as interim head coach in the spring of 2021, and assistant coach/operations director at Division II Rollins College (FL), where Whetstone also earned her business degree.

The Florida native said she began seriously looking into coaching after high school, where Whetstone was a two-sport athlete in basketball and volleyball. “It was definitely right after high school,” she recalled. “When I went to Rollins, I just asked the coach, ‘I just want to be involved with the team.’”

Whetstone was a student assistant coach and team manager for Rollins. During her first stint with the team, the school made three NCAA Tournament trips, and she also assisted at a local high school that finished as the state runners-up in 2016.

“That’s what sparked my love of coaching,” stated Whetstone, who later was an assistant varsity coach at a Texas high school (2018-19). But that love was finally cemented while she was in graduate school at Texas A&M (2018-19), for her master’s degree in sports management.

Whetstone coached the Texas A&M Women’s Club Basketball Team to a 31-4 record and a 2018 club championship, as well as a regional title in 2019. During that time, she also served as operations assistant for the Aggies women’s volleyball team.

When she was asked to coach the basketball team, she admitted, “I didn’t realize I’d be doing everything by myself. “I had a real solid group of 12 girls that listened to me, that understood what I was trying to do. And understood I was trying to win.

“That really shaped me. After that, I really knew I could coach” and run a program effectively, she said..

Wearing multiple hats along with coaching is par for the course at a junior college such as Madison College, a two-year community college where students can earn an associate degree, technical diploma, or certificate in one of more than 180 programs. Along with her coaching duties, Whetstone is also the school’s eligibility, compliance, and game-management coordinator.

“I have been doing administration work for a while,” she said.

Whetstone joins the growing number of Black women hired as head basketball coaches at all levels. “I can say there has been improvement. Sometimes I feel like there’s a lack of representation of people that look like me in the majority of these [head coaching] positions.”

Whetstone looks forward to her first season leading the Madison College women’s basketball program, where she inherits a club that went 8-20 last season and has only six first-year players eligible to return this season.

“This is a great university,” said Whetstone. “I’m excited to be able to build and try something new.”