Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White addresses new role for WNBA

Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White has never been shy about expressing her frustrations with officiating in the WNBA. In fact, she received a fine from the league last season for criticizing game officials. This was not the first time the outspoken coach was punished for her criticism.

This year, White is taking a different approach. She has been commissioned to join a new task force formed to improve the quality of refereeing in the WNBA.

On Friday, ahead of the Fever’s home game against the Washington Mystics, White revealed that she is part of the said task force. The 48-year-old went into detail about what the new role entails and the message she’s trying to get across to her players.

Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White sheds light on new officiating task force

Reporters asked White what she needs to do to fulfill the duties of her new role. The veteran coach admitted that it requires a lot of work.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of things,” White said. “I mean, it’s Zooms, it’s phone calls, it’s going through exercises together.

“There’s learning from our end, too, about mechanics, and angles, and whose calls what, and different things like that, too. And then there’s demarcation lines of what we want as coaches and as a league, and what the officials see and enforce.

“So it’s a lot of conversation. It’s a lot of X’s and O’s, and then it’s just follow-through and follow-up now.”

This is a double-edged sword for White. She has the advantage of an insider perspective on the planned improvements in officiating across the league. At the same time, however, the fact that she’s part of the task force means she is also expected to give referees some leeway throughout this learning process.

White also admitted that this entails telling her own players “to stop complaining.”

“We understand where we want the game to get to,” White stated. “And so in order to do that, there’s gonna be an overcorrection, so to speak, right? Until we find the level playing field.

“And one of the things that we’ve discussed is just, we want the game to be free-flowing. And so players are good, they’ll adjust.”

This does not mean that White and her players will blindly accept every single call during games. This is exactly why White made it clear that she is still holding the referees accountable.

“But you’ve gotta be consistent to call everything early,” she continued. “Everything that’s a foul — I mean, we’re not talking about something that’s marginal contact. But the slugfest that we’ve seen over the last few years, nobody wants that.

“And so yeah, guys, we’re just gonna have to adjust to this. This is where we are. This is the way that we’re going to get our game to where we want it to get to.

“There’s obviously going to be some growing pains, but the quicker we adjust, the more successful we’ll be.”

The post Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White addresses new role for WNBA appeared first on ChiCitySports.