Before then, 90 per cent of coaches in women’s college sports were female. In 2019, only 40 per cent were. McGraw had had enough.
“I was a little tired of looking around and seeing all the male head coaches,” McGraw says. “And tired of the question ‘would you ever hire a man?’ I have had men on my staff for my entire career, so of course I would, but I think that it was so important that I talked about how important it is to hire women.
“Mine was the only all-female staff at the Final Four that year, and women would say, ‘I’m cheering for you guys because I am pro women’. After my speech, I noticed the NBA started to hire more women as assistant coaches, and I was hoping that it started the conversation. But it’s still a novelty – we need to get to the point where it’s the norm.”
After guiding 20 players to the WNBA and making it into basketball’s Hall of Fame, McGraw, 64, has finished coaching. Her former player and assistant of 12 years, Niele Ivey, has stepped into her shoes, as the first black woman to head up a sports team at the university. It is exactly the progress McGraw was talking about: “Finally having an African American head coach at Notre Dame – in the women’s game we don’t have enough diversity – so I’m thrilled for every reason that she’s here. There are so many qualified women in our game, we’re just not doing a good job of preparing them to be head coaches.
“And I think it falls on the head coach to do that.”
While McGraw feared that she might lose her platform after she had retired, her work since then suggests otherwise. She just started teaching a new sports leadership class at Notre Dame’s business school and during lockdown organised food drives to help local struggling families.
She also hosted an online Q&A about women in leadership with Serena Williams. “On the court she is brimming with confidence, but then in meetings with her financial people suddenly they’re treating her like she’s ‘just a woman’. So it was great for all of the women listening to hear we’re all fighting the same battles.
“We have to empower each other and bring somebody with us when we get a seat at the table. But we need men to be advocates for us and to be hiring women.”
McGraw has proven her own commitment to empowering the women around her.
Last summer she met with the now-WNBA commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, who she coached at Lehigh College in the mid 1980s. Nearly 40 years on, Engelbert – now the most powerful woman in basketball – wanted some advice.
“We got together before she accepted the WNBA job. We talked about the offer and I said, ‘you’re perfect for it, this is going to be great’. And we’ve talked since then, just about how we’re doing things and how she’s doing.”
That sounds a lot like she is still a coach and much less a retiree. McGraw laughs. “Yeah, that’s how it is with most of the players. You don’t talk daily or even weekly, but suddenly there’s something big in their life and that’s when they pick up the phone.
“I enjoy that. It’s all about the relationship and connection that you make – that’s really what coaching is all about.”
