Meet Carol Callan, the backstage architect of the U.S. women’s basketball dynasty

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LILLE, France — For the last seven Summer Olympics, Carol Callan has woken up on the morning of the opening ceremonies with a checklist and a hypothetical fire extinguisher. The checklist contained everything that could conceivably go awry: missing shoelaces, practice schedules in need of tweaks, backup transit solutions, alternate uniforms being packed in the off-chance that Team USA’s opponents showed up in the wrong gear. Every metaphorical pothole that could exist between that moment and a gold medal was already foreseen (and pre-fixed) by Callan, who from 1996 through the Tokyo Games in 2021 was the director of the women’s program for USA Basketball.

But Friday, the day of the opening ceremonies, Callan awoke in Paris following a red-eye flight from the States. There was no checklist or fire extinguisher. No shoelaces stored away. No file of phone numbers for backup transit solutions available in Paris. After helping Team USA to its seventh consecutive gold medal in Tokyo, she stepped away to join FIBA full-time.

Though her role is adjacent and continues the growth of basketball worldwide and, specifically, for women in the game, it is much different now. And as the Games kick off and Team USA goes for its eighth gold medal in the streak — its first without Callan at the head of the program — Callan acknowledges she isn’t sure how it will feel to go through the Games without clutching that hypothetical fire extinguisher.

Because from Atlanta to Athens, London to Tokyo, Callan was a shapeshifter, fulfilling the needs of each respective team during its Olympic journey and the four years leading up to it.

In 1996, she was then-head coach Tara VanDerveer’s running partner every other day during the year-long tour leading up to the Atlanta Games. In 2004, Callan started every morning with a coffee with Van Chancellor, knowing that was how he started his days back home. And in the 2012 and 2016 cycles, she hit the golf course with Geno Auriemma, the only two-time coach of the Olympic team. In 2021, with the Olympics devoid of its usual pomp and circumstance, Callan knew that what Dawn Staley needed was a reminder that — just as it was for Staley as a player, and as an assistant — all she needed to do was take care of the basketball side of things and Callan and her team would handle everything else.

“She’s the common denominator behind all of the success,” current Olympic team coach Cheryl Reeve said. “The culture that she established, the attention to detail, the discipline that she wanted the team to possess, that was all Carol.”

“Anytime that you have sustained success in any organization or team, there’s always somebody that’s working behind the scenes,” Staley said. “Carol has been that for us. The secret to our success is her.”

“She’s the architect,” said Diana Taurasi, now at her sixth Olympic Games.

Geno Auriemma and Carol Callan in 2013. Callan presided over both of Auriemma’s head-coaching stints for the U.S. women. (John Woike / Hartford Courant / MCT via Getty Images)

From the beginning, Callan’s role went far beyond the typical scope of a team director because she understood the goal for this national program would go far beyond the scope of just winning.

Callan joined USA Basketball in 1989 as the representative from the high school level on the Games Committee, the group tasked with selecting coaches and players for USA Basketball’s women’s teams. She was a high school athletic director and assistant principal at the time, not really posing a threat to any of the collegiate coaches on the committee. In 1993, she was promoted to the executive committee secretary role when the committee broke into two committees, one to select players and one to select coaches, chairing the player selection committee.

In those years, Callan spent most of her time picking the brains of those in the room: VanDerveer, C. Vivian Stringer, Jody Conradt, Debbie Ryan. “My best quality was to observe and listen,” she said.

Her time with the committees, while still working in the high school, meant Callan had a front-row seat as USA Basketball went through a tumultuous period in the early ’90s. Even before the disastrous 1992 Games, when the American women took bronze, alarm bells were already going off for USA Basketball. In 1991, Team USA had lost to Brazil in the Pan Am Games, breaking a 42-game win streak.

Then came the 1992 Olympics, in which the Soviet Union’s coach gave the most succinct summation of Team USA’s problem: “U.S. players … very individual good players. Team, not so good.” Then, the women followed up the Olympic bronze with another bronze medal at the 1994 World Cup.

Internationally, the American women were slipping, and stateside, the NBA was considering starting the WNBA and using the 1996 Olympics as a launchpad. For the stature of American women’s basketball to grow, in the U.S. and abroad, Team USA needed to take a new direction, and it needed a leader who could see the big picture while handling the daily needs.

After six years on the committee, Callan was tapped to take over the senior program before the 1996 Games (and after Atlanta, the entire Team USA program, including its youth teams). She certainly hadn’t imagined this was where her life was going to go, and in those early months after accepting the job, she’d wake up at night, wondering what she had done. In grade school, she had taken an interests test that informed her she should become an Air Force general. She disagreed but understood why the test might think that way. Callan had always loved math and logic. She liked puzzles and understanding how each piece fit together. She preferred to understand systems instead of just results.

Carol Callan, Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner

Carol Callan with Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner at a 2017 Phoenix Mercury game. Taurasi and Callan won five gold medals together. (Barry Gossage / NBAE via Getty Images)

Callan loved to reference one of her leadership idols — Walt Disney — and often uses a quote she attributes to his brother Roy: “When principles are clear, decision-making is easy.”

In her first year on the job, Team USA sent its senior women’s team on a year-long, 52-game tour across the globe to drum up interest and support for American women’s basketball. With a year together, Callan was able to emphasize her team-first approach. She gave presentations on the program’s five core values: the pursuit of excellence, teamwork/maturity (“My definition of maturity is when you think more of others than yourself, and that’s why a team works,” Callan says), relationships, accountability and leadership. Callan instituted rules around the team’s appearance; namely, from their shoes to their headbands (if players wore them) that the team wore like uniforms. Everyone’s Nike socks needed to face forward at the same height. Shorts were only rolled once, if at all. No sleeves on your arms or legs unless medically necessary, and if something was medically necessary, it needed to be the same color as the team’s uniform.

That visual uniformity was all part of the team-first approach. And even after the 1996 Games, when Callan knew she wouldn’t have a year with every squad, Team USA continued to implement the discussion of the core values, the emphasis of the program’s principles, and the need to put the team ahead of the individual in every instance.

From their year-long tour ahead of Atlanta to the COVID-19 Games of 2021, Callan was the perpetual presence in the Team USA program, instituting her vision for what this program could become in the world standing and what it could help grow in the states.

“What’s across the chest — USA — had to be the player’s priority, not their own statistics, not their own stage, if you will. That’s what Carol was incredibly diligent about, and that’s the culture that carries on and lives on today,” Reeve said. “She was the common thread of Olympic four-year cycles. As the players changed, she was the one.”

Now, this team — the first without Callan of the gold medal streak — begins its hunt for another top finish. And if these players stand on the shoulders of giants, then Callan is the one who not only built the floor but also raised it over time. She is not only the architect but also, in many ways, the artist.

Outside of basketball circles, though, she isn’t as recognized as A’ja Wilson or Breanna Stewart or Taurasi. Arguably, those women wouldn’t have the heavy legacy to carry if it weren’t for Callan and the way she helped establish the American women on the international scene back in 1996 and continued to cultivate the program’s culture through the next six Olympic Games.

“She set the standard in a lot of ways,” five-time Olympian Sue Bird said. “Because how you go about winning a gold medal isn’t just about scoring a basket or getting a rebound. There’s so much more to it. And she really was that standard-setter for a very long time. … She was kind of like a heartbeat in that way.”