Branching Out Beyond Basketball

One of the primary properties of ivy, is its adaptability.  The plant thrives in varied conditions, and it can tolerate different soil types.  Despite the slight spelling difference in her last name,Niele Ivey displays these properties on and off the basketball court.  From a challenging upbringing on the north side of St. Louis, to her historic run as the first Black female head coach of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team, she’s experienced success in the sometimes stubborn sods of collegiate and professional basketball, motherhood and more.  Covered in leaves of love, humility and strength, Ivey’s branches in the sports world stretch far and wide, and the fruit birthed from her budding coaching career can be found in her winning resume and connection with her players both past and present. 

On game days, the sidelines are Ivey’s runway.  Passionate and pacing back and forth in nothing less than a fashion forward look, she directs traffic on the court and presses her players to give maximum effort.  At the core of her composed bravado lies a fierce, humble competitor, who wants nothing more than to challenge her current victories with the threat of her next tier of success.  A self-professed tomboy since her youth, Ivey’s fire for basketball glory was birthed by a soul stirring admiration for her four older brothers. 

With a grin only a baby sister can possess, she dotes on the bond she shares with her siblings, “I just wanted to be with my brothers, and we used to hoop outside.  We went up to the park and played basketball all day long, and I just looked up to them, and I just wanted to be like them.  That’s where I got the love of competing and playing.” 

Throughout the course of her childhood, Ivey’s competitive drive would push her into playing several sports before setting her sights solely on basketball.  “I was really athletic and competitive, so I did a lot of things like soccer, softball and volleyball…basketball was just something that felt natural for me,” she says. 

A knack for academics and basketball watered Ivey’s dreams and propelled her past generational limits.  Upon receiving a full scholarship to play basketball for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in 1996, the 5’7” point guard became the first person in her family to go to college.  With beating the odds as the backdrop of her life, Ivey says she embraced being in the shade, “I was always the underdog. I was never highly recruited.  I always played with a chip on my shoulder and just feeling like I had something to prove.” 

After tearing her ACL five games into her freshman season at Notre Dame, Ivey’s quest to prove to herself took on new meaning.  Sidelined for the remainder of that season and forced to watch her team make it to their first Final Four appearance in school history, she initially struggled to make sense of her circumstance but ultimately found her spiritual footing, “The game had never been taken away from me before…So, I really struggled having to sit on the sideline.  But that grew me and developed me as a person and developed my faith.  I was able to lean on my family network here at Notre Dame,” she says.  

Ivey’s renewed sense of faith, family and self-confidence drove her past the trauma inflicted from her knee injury and pushed her to lead the Fighting Irish to their first National Championship in her final season.  Along with the championship trophy, she left Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in history, third team AP All-America honors, several prestigious awards and school playing records that helped seal her space among the university’s most prominent athletes.  

With roots firmly in place at her alma mater, the top-tier point guard turned her attention toward professional basketball.  Picked 19th by the Indiana Fever in the 2001 WNBA Draft, Ivey sought to prove herself on new terrain, but her aim soon changed after discovering she was pregnant her rookie season.  She calmly recollects hiding her pregnancy and continuing to play for nearly three months, because of salary decrease concerns, “At that time, if you said you were pregnant, you would get maybe 60 percent of your salary, and the salary was very low…I was probably making like $40,000 or something like that in the summertime, so I was like, ‘okay, I’m not going to say anything.  I’m going to wait’…So, you can imagine the amount of stress that I was going through…”

With the ebbs and flows of being a single mother adding weighty branches to her tree of life, Ivey quickly shifted gears and poured all she had into her son Jaden.  “After having Jaden, my perspective changed, my motivation changed in such a powerful way.  I just felt like I’m a survivor…So, my priorities shifted, and everything was for him.  And that created a really strong bond that I had with him,” she says. 

That unbreakable bond helped boost Jaden into a thriving NBA career, where he continues to enjoy a successful run with the Detroit Pistons.  When asked about what part of her game she passed on to her son, Niele Ivey, sits back in her chair for a few seconds, ponders on the question and then responds, “I would say his heart.  He is so passionate in his competitiveness, and that’s how I am, and that’s how I was.  I played with my heart.  I left it on the floor.” 

Ivey’s unbridled passion and diligence put her back on the hardwood just six weeks after giving birth to Jaden.  In 2002, after working tirelessly in training camp to get her body “game ready” for her second WNBA season, the determined single mom and fierce floor general, helped lead the Indiana Fever to their first playoff birth in franchise history.  

Basketball Hall of Famer, and Indiana Fever star, Tamika Catchings, recalls how Ivey’s vitality contributed to the franchise’s success.  “She was a contagious competitor with a smile…she was the head of the snake at the point guard position.  When you see somebody who played with the tenacity and the joy that she played with, it’s a contagious thing that made you want to play hard,” she says. Ivey’s energy and work ethic kept her with the Indiana Fever for two more seasons before she moved on for brief stints with the Detroit Shock and the Phoenix Mercury. 

As the leaves of Niele Ivey’s pro basketball career withered away, she began sowing seeds into a life on the sidelines.  In 2005, she found her stride as an administrative assistant for the women’s basketball program at Xavier University.  A position she says helped shape and solidify her call to coach the game she loved, “I fell in love with connecting with the players, and I just felt like, this is something I can see myself doing after I stopped playing, because I really enjoyed sharing my experiences…I’m very relational. So, I enjoy the relationships that I had with the players and I knew that they responded. They responded to me, and I wasn’t a coach,” she says. 

Relationships continued to carve space for Ivey’s coaching journey, and in 2007 she accepted an assistant coaching position on fertile ground that meant so much to her growth as an athlete and as a woman: The University of Notre Dame.  The opportunity with the Fighting Irish was Ivey’s first shot at coaching on the collegiate level, and as an assistant coach she maximized the moments by spearheading an impeccable recruiting infrastructure for the women’s basketball program. 

Tagged a “players coach,” by student-athletes, colleagues and basketball enthusiasts across the globe, Ivey puts great pride in relating to her players and pushing them beyond self-induced or stereotypical limits.  She credits a hub of sisterhood as the connector for those who’ve donned the Fighting Irishuniform in the past and presently.  “It’s the sisterhood and the family aspect of this program that means the most to me…One of the big core values here at Notre Dame is love, it’s family.  Love is number one, and always showing that love, always having love around them, knowing that they are loved and knowing their worth,” she says. 

Skylar Diggins-Smith, an All-American at Notre Dame during Ivey’s time as an assistant coach turned WNBA All-Star and fashion mogul, echoes Coach Ivey’s sentiments, and says the woman who recruited her to play for the Fighting Irish and who she grew up admiring since childhood, has bloomed into one of her closest confidants.  “We have an admiration for each other.  We have a respect for each other.  She raises the bar and makes me want to go harder, she’s also a very supportive person…So, it’s a blessing, and as far as women in my life that are impactful to me after my mother and grandmother, it’s Niele.” 

Coach Ivey’s ties to those who’ve come through the Notre Dame Women’s Basketball program and come out on the other side successfully, did not stop with Diggins-Smith.  The Fighting Irish’s all-time leading scorer and one of Ivey’s top recruits, Arike Ogunbowale, credits the competitive strategist with gifting her with intangibles she’ll continue to carry through her WNBA career and beyond.  “She’s been so sincere.  She wanted to see every single one of us be great.  She had her time, and she wanted to pour everything into us, and we felt it…We were young, but we knew this was special…She was about winning and doing it right and being competitive.  I think that’s something we’ll always remember,” Ogunbowale says. 

Ivey’s tenure as an assistant and associate head coach at Notre Damegrew into a garden decorated with seven Final Four appearances.  The sustained success shined a light on her aptitude for the “x’s and o’s,” and her gift for toeing the line of connecting with players personally while pulling out their best on the basketball court.  After 12 years serving on the sidelines for the Fighting Irish, Ivey accepted an assistant coaching position with the Memphis Grizzlies.  Although, she discusses this groundbreaking move casually when asked, in accepting the call to coach for the franchise, she became its first black female coach, the ninth active woman coach in NBA history and one of the few black female coaches in the NBA at that time.  No stranger to overcoming the odds, Ivey acknowledges what her historic move meant for others saying with a soft smile, “When I was in Memphis, I used to sit at those games and everybody stopped me, and girls, women were just like, ‘you go, girl.’  They were so happy that there was finally a barrier that was broken in the NBA in Memphis, a very diverse city.  They were really proud. They (the city) took me on like I was their daughter.” 

But the embrace of the city of Memphis was not enough to keep Ivey close.  Purpose was pulling her back to the roots she’d revisited once before, and she left the Memphis Grizzlies after just one season to return to the soil that always felt most malleable under her feet: The University of Notre Dame.  In the spring of 2020, Ivey became the first black female head coach for the women’s basketball team, and her reign as the fearless leader for the Fighting Irish has been fruitful. 

Now five years in as the head coach, Ivey has earned ACC Coach of the Year (2023) and led the Fighting Irish to an ACC Tournament title and four consecutive trips to the Sweet 16.  But with cutting down nets and NCAA tourney trips comes the task of keeping a good thing going.  With the fandom for the Fighting Irish women’s squad at an all time high, Ivey acknowledges the existence of the pressure cooker saying, “I feel the fire.  I feel the pressure always.  I feel the expectation to win, and the challenges that come along with that.  But I knew I signed up for it too.  I always tried not to focus on it, but also just rely on my faith.  Even when I feel at my lowest point, I try not to get too high or never too low.”  

Ivey’s passionate and balanced approach has served her well, and with a nationally ranked squad led by All-Americans, Hannah Hildago and Olivia Miles, Notre Dame women’s basketball will continue to add tallies to the win column.  Ivey’s coaching staff also casts a web of support to protect her from outside noise and aid her vision for the team’s present and future.   

Carol Owens serves as the associate head coach for the Fighting Irish and did not hesitate in emphasizing the importance of protecting the woman who she recruited to play for Notre Dame nearly thirty years ago, “I try to be an advisor to her (Niele), a sounding board.  I want her to know she’s not on an island by herself…Black women get jobs where they have to dig it out of a ditch, and people don’t know how hard it is.  She does a great job of building relationships with the kids.  She is a great ‘x’s and o’s coach.  Black women don’t get that credit.  They get credit for being a great recruiter.  Niele has it all.”    

In Ivey’s “all,” lies a quest to enjoy life outside the lines.  Many of her brightest moments have come while spending time with her son Jaden and her twin nephews.  A proud “supermom,” she can be found cheering Jaden on in the stands during his games with the Detroit Pistons, and quality time spent with her nephews in the form of bowling sessions, dinners and visits to the park are etched on her human highlight reel.  Ivey says a life beyond basketball helps charge her success within the sport, “I realize if I don’t fill my own tank, I won’t have enough to give what I need to give to these players in this program.  So, I try to refuel myself as much as I can.”

Whether it’s meditation sessions, exercising, trips overseas to explore castles in Croatia or retail therapy stints to grab a fresh pair of pumps and an oversized blazer, Ivey keeps a grip on the joys of self-care, especially when fashion is involved.  “I think I work really hard, and I like nice things.  If that’s heels, if that’s different pieces that I feel make me feel beautiful, make me feel sexy and elegant.  I like that because there was a time when I couldn’t do that,” she says. 

One thing Niele Ivey has done is consistently win basketball games.  But despite her winning track record, passion for player development and long-standing relationships with players and colleagues, she refuses to call herself a great coach.  “I think I’m a really, really good coach, and I want to be great one day…I always want to be better.  I always want every year to come back.  I want to bring something back great for this program. I want to help elevate this program. So I guess I’m always striving to grow even more.”  

With infinite potential in her grasp, dreams of winning a national championship peaking through her clouds of adversity, and more young lives to lift up, it seems we’ll have to accept Niele Ivey as a “good” coach, until she decides to let the record books make the assessment, because they certainly have her listed as one of the greats. 

CREDITS:

Written by Shari Welton 
Photographed by Christian Cody 
Styled by Sharifa Morris 
Hair: Tish Celestine using True Indian Hair Company & Shea Moisture at Labelle Boutique 
Makeup: Elizabeth Coleman using Beauty King & Fenty Beauty 
Nails: Melanie Phillips 
Photography Assistant: Steven Connor 
Digital Technician: Rudy Lorejo 
Styling Intern: Liatu King 
Production: The Morrison Group 
Production Manager: Georgia Ford 
Special Thanks: Morris Inn at UND 

 ESSENCE, VP, Content: Nandi Howard 
ESSENCE, Visual Director: Michael Quinn 
ESSENCE, Senior Designer: Sophia Little 
ESSENCE, Activations Director: Pietrina Love