Debbie Black was hired as the new women’s basketball coach at Eastern, on May 16, 2013.

Eastern Athletic Director Barbara Burke said Black’s experience has had her successful at all levels in the game of basketball.

“During her interview she displayed an energy, passion and drive for coaching the game that will keep Eastern Illinois as one of the top programs, not only in the Ohio Valley Conference, but in the region,” Burke said in a press release.

As a former assistant at Ohio State University for eight years, Black has worked and played for some of the most successful coaches in women’s basketball.

For eight years, Black had a successful run for the Buckeyes program under Jim Foster, who is now the coach of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which saw the team win six Big Ten Championships in eight seasons.  

The program made several NCAA tournament appearances including two trips to the sweet 16 in 2009 and 2011. 

Black always wanted to be a head coach and during the first five years at Ohio State, she realized that that would be the next step.

With coaching and playing under Foster, Black said she was able to learn a lot from the former Buckeye head coach. 

“Sometimes head coaches who haven’t had that experience don’t know what the assistant coaches go through,” she said. “I think I have a good feel for what my assistant coaches go through, and if I didn’t have that experience, I wouldn’t know that.”

While at Ohio State, Black worked at a recruiter and a specialist in developing guards. 

In college at St. Joseph University, Black was a multi-sport athlete and earned 12 varsity letters in basketball, field hockey and softball.

Black played professional basketball for eighteen years, including stints in the Women’s National Basketball League in Australia, where she played for the Tasmanian Islanders for eight years and won two national titles in 1991 and 1995.

Black also played in the American Basketball League and the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Black was drafted the third player selected in the second round at 15^th overall by the Utah Starzz in the 1999 WNBA Draft.

While only playing for the Starzz for one season, Black then played the Miami Sol in 2000 and earned the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year in 2001 as a guard. She averaged 2.6 steals per game and 3.9 rebounds.

In 2003, Black was acquired by the Connecticut Sun during the dispersal draft and retired in 2005 at the age of 39. 

Black is the only professional player ever to record a quadruple-double with 10 points, 14 rebounds, 12 assists and 10 steals.

At 5-foot-2, Black was always the smallest person on the court and said she got under people’s skin.

“I figured I am the smallest one on the court, so I am going to have to be a pest,” she said. “It is really a compliment, because I play hard.” 

Black said she has lived a ‘fairytale life’. 

“I been a little kid for pretty much my whole life,” she said. “I got to do something I loved. I was healthy. I got to coach for eight years and now I’m a head coach, so really it’s been a dream. I don’t think I could have written it better.”

After retiring, Black said it was difficult to transition from player to coach, because she missed what she loved.

“I wasn’t sure how I was going to transition to sit on the sideline as a teacher,” she said. “After the first three, I started to realize the benefits of teaching young female athletes. It was pretty neat to see them mature and grow up.”

Bob Reynolds can be reached at 581-2812 or rjreynolds@eiu.edu.