Top Assistant Brings Rare Perspective
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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE – A University of Virginia women’s basketball player who complains about a minor inconvenience is unlikely to get much sympathy from associate head coach Karleen Thompson.
Thompson has overcome obstacles most college students would struggle to fathom. As a single mother raising two young daughters in Los Angeles, she took a full load of classes at the University of Southern California while starting at guard for its powerful women’s basketball team.
She rarely slept more than a few hours each night. Among those who marveled at her stamina and perseverance was her USC teammate Tina Thompson (no relation), who’s now her boss.
“It was incredible,” Tina Thompson, Virginia’s first-year head women’s coach, recalled in her John Paul Jones Arena office.
“Her days were crazy from the time when she woke up, to getting the girls to school and then getting to class herself and going through the day, to leaving and going to get the girls and bringing them back to campus, and then studying.”
Karleen Thompson would put her daughters to bed around 8:30 p.m. Then she’d clean the apartment and get their school clothes ready for the next morning. She’d study past midnight and often didn’t get to bed till about 2 a.m.
“It was not easy by any means,” she said.
Thompson refused to be deterred, though, and graduated from USC in 1997. After a brief stint working for Gatorade, she returned to the basketball world. For most of the past two decades, she’s been a coach, primarily in the WNBA: with the Houston Comets, the Los Angeles Sparks and, most recently, the Atlanta Dream.
In July, she started work at JPJ. Better than most, Thompson understands the challenges and time demands that Division I student-athletes face. She also knows what they’re capable of achieving, even in the face of adversity.
“You can’t really give her an excuse, because she’s been there, done that, and more,” UVA guard Jocelyn Willoughby said.
To a Virginia program looking to return to national prominence, Karleen Thompson brings “experience,” Tina Thompson said, “and the versatility of having worked in so many aspects and levels of the game. She can relate to everyone that’s here. And I trust her.
“That’s probably the biggest thing, because I’m going into the homes of parents and telling them certain things that I absolutely need to be true, and we are responsible for other people’s children. So I have to trust that my vision and the things that I want to happen and I say to be true are things we can actually follow through on.”
One of 12 children in a sports-mad family – her brother Ken played in the NFL — Karleen Thompson was born in San Diego, California. But she spent much of her childhood in Texas, where her father lived.
At Snyder High School, Thompson starred in basketball, volleyball and track & field, and she planned to attend Texas Tech on a volleyball scholarship.
“As short as I am, I was a middle blocker,” said Thompson, who stands 5-7. “I could jump.”
She never made it to Lubbock. After graduating from high school, she became pregnant with her first child, Ayesha, who was born in February 1987. About a year later, Keisha was born.
Thompson passed on college, moved to Albuquerque with the girls’ father, and focused on raising her family. She worked a variety of low-paying jobs before deciding in 1991 to move back to California to pursue a college education.
She enrolled at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, where she planned to join the track & field team, whose coach was Steve Greer. But Thompson was passing the school’s gymnasium one day with her cousin when she heard balls bouncing. The junior-college’s women’s basketball team was working out.
“I saw them playing in the gym, and I told my cousin, ‘I can still do that,’ ” Thompson recalled.
Her life had changed, however, since she’d starred at Snyder High.
“I had the girls with me,” Thompson said. “They were with me every step of the way. I was a mom first, and then a full-time student and an athlete.”
In track & field, she starred as a sprinter, triple jumper and long jumper for Contra Costa. She also excelled in basketball for head coach Paul DeBolt.
In 1991-92, Thompson averaged a school-record 29.5 points and 14.6 rebounds per game. As a sophomore, she averaged 42.2 points and 19.5 rebounds.
Division I basketball programs noticed, and they extended scholarship offers. She chose USC, in part because then-head coach Marianne Stanley “understood my situation,” Thompson said. “I had two kids, and we were a package deal. So she showed me the USC magnet school that they would be able to attend.”
Tina Thompson was two years behind Karleen Thompson at USC. The former remembers that when the Trojans’ coaches “read off Karleen’s accolades and what she had accomplished, we were all geeked that we were getting a player of that caliber.”
This was before Google was an option, so Tina Thompson knew little about her new teammate, other than statistics.
“When I saw her, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? That can’t be her,’ ” Tina Thompson recalled, laughing. “I thought she’d at least be 5-11 or 6-foot. I thought she was at least a forward. I did not think she was a guard.”
Karleen Thompson’s principal mode of transportation at USC? A Diamondback bicycle. “That was my car,” she said. “I had one kid in front and one on the back.”
Following this unconventional path, she thrived at USC, where she joined the track & field team for one season after completing her basketball eligibility. Thompson could not have done so alone.
“It was definitely a family,” she said. “People on campus helped me with my girls. Everyone knew my kids.”
USC staffers, especially members of the sports information department, helped watch the girls when Thompson had other obligations. So would fellow USC athletes, including her basketball teammates Lisa Leslie and Tina Thompson.
“They would just come and hang out,” Tina Thompson said. “I wouldn’t necessarily call it babysitting. They were just very familiar with the environment. They had been around teams and in the gym. So they could be in the gym, and they weren’t in the way. They’d be doing schoolwork or playing or just being content with the environment they were in.
“We knew they were there and they weren’t a distraction. And they were very mature, so they were really, really easy, and just flat-out adorable. I have the best relationship with both of them. They call me an aunt, and I call them my nieces, and unless someone knew the complete story, they wouldn’t know any different.”
In the WNBA, Thompson worked as an assistant coach – often on staffs led by former NBA standout Michael Cooper – and as a head coach (for the Houston Comets). She also served as Houston’s general manager. She later was acting GM for the Atlanta Dream.
Among the players she coached in Houston was Tina Thompson, who last month was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Karleen Thompson also coached a star-laden team in Russia — Moscow-based Spartak — that included Tina Thompson, Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi and Lauren Jackson.
“That team was fully loaded,” Karleen Thompson said.
Of her reunion with Tina Thompson, Karleen Thompson said: “It’s kind of weird, because you look at her and it’s like, ‘This was my teammate, then she was my player, and now she’s my boss.’ Well, it’s the same thing: I was her teammate, and then I was her boss.
“We get along well. I think it’s a good dynamic. I know her. She knows me. She trusts me, and I think that’s the first thing that you have to have. I’m going to do whatever she needs me to do and help her in any way I can.”
From their days in the WNBA, Karleen Thompson already knew UVA assistant coach La’Keshia Frett Meredith, and she’d been to JPJ as a Clemson assistant (2010 to 2013).
Thompson’s daughters, who grew up in Los Angeles, each graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans. Keisha lives in L.A. Ayesha lives in Atlanta with her identical twin sons, Tyler and Kameron.
Karleen Thompson was living in Atlanta and enjoying life with her grandsons when Tina Thompson called to talk about a staff opening at UVA. The opportunity intrigued Karleen Thompson, who decided to join her longtime friend in Charlottesville.
She had opportunities to return to the WNBA, but she’s delighted to be back in the college game.
“I definitely enjoy developing players,” Karleen Thompson said, “and so I love to coach younger players and help them in life, period. Because it’s a tough world out there, and it’s not just about basketball. I like being able to touch them in different ways.
“I just enjoy being around young people. It keeps me young.”