GoHeels Exclusive: Banghart Blazes Trail To Become Women's Basketball Head Coach

By Pat James, GoHeels.com

Everywhere she went the last few years, Courtney Banghart heard the same question, the one that frustrated her the most.

"Where are you going?"

The more she heard it, the more agitated she became. And the more protective she was of what she called the greatest job in the country as Princeton's head women's basketball coach.

Since accepting that role in 2007, she'd built the program to the point that winning Ivy League championships and going to the NCAA Tournament seemingly became routine. Her success left media members and coaches wondering how she'd do at a bigger school. But she refused to talk about that in public out of respect for her current team.

That, however, doesn't mean she never pondered over the idea of leaving in private.

Over the years, she heard from several schools, the large majority of which she chose not to interview with. Twice she visited other campuses, once in 2013 and again 2016. But after the latter trip, she returned to Princeton, and vowed she'd never visit another school unless she was fairly certain that she'd accept its offer.

"I knew there were only a very small handful – like one, two or three – of schools that I was going to be willing to talk to," Banghart said. "But if that (athletic director) called, I would listen and I would talk and I would be willing to engage."

Earlier this year, that opportunity finally came about.

A few hours after North Carolina announced on April 19 that Sylvia Hatchell was resigning as head women's basketball coach, one of Banghart's friends texted her, telling her Bubba Cunningham had asked for her number. Before she could alert her family, her phone started ringing. So many times before she'd ignored another school's call. But this time, she picked up.

"And in that moment," she said, "I was like, 'Holy man, my life could change.'"

Even then, Banghart could've elected to stay at Princeton, where she surely would've cemented her status as an Ivy League Hall of Famer and could've even gone on to become the winningest coach in league history.

"That just isn't on my tombstone. It's just not," she said. "For me, life is meant to be lived. And the opportunity to live the life of a college basketball coach at the University of North Carolina was far more worth it to me than the risk of not. I didn't want to regret not living something like this."

Humble beginnings

Amherst, New Hampshire, is not exactly a basketball recruiting hotbed. It's a quintessential New England town of about 12,000. At its center is the town common, which contained the church, general store and doctor's office that Banghart frequented growing up.

Neither of Banghart's parents, Jim and Anne, is from Amherst. But the school system made it an ideal place to call home. So did the strong sense of community that they felt – which became even more palpable when Banghart, her older sister Jen and her younger brother J.B., all started playing sports at early ages. For Banghart, it's difficult to determine exactly when that was.

"Maybe from the day she was born," her mother said. "She was always into sports. She always had some kind of ball."

Summers consisted of being dropped off at the local swim and tennis club at 8 a.m. and staying until 5 p.m. Winters were highlighted by hockey on the nearby pond. No matter the time of year, though, Banghart found a way to play basketball.

"I would leave a state championship soccer game where I would score the winning goal," she said, "and I wouldn't even take my shinguards off and I'd be shooting hoops in the driveway. It's just always been the sport that I enjoyed the most."

It wasn't, however, her best.

In addition to winning two state basketball championships and three state tennis titles (one in singles and two in doubles) at Souhegan High School, Banghart was an All-American and four-time state champion in soccer. Her 147 career goals were the most in state history. And her exploits on the pitch drew the attention of some of the nation's top programs.

Eventually, Banghart narrowed down her list of colleges to Boston College, Notre Dame and Dartmouth. The last of those, her parents told her, seemed like the right choice, given the value of an Ivy League education. Banghart knew they were right. But before making a decision, she received a call from Dartmouth head women's soccer coach Steve Swanson that altered her path.

Swanson, who is now the head coach at Virginia, told Banghart he was leaving Dartmouth for Stanford. He then presented two options: follow him or stick around as Dartmouth's top recruit.

"Or," she said, "I'm just going to call the basketball coach."

Shortly after, that's exactly what she did. Although Banghart never played club basketball, she said Dartmouth women's basketball coach Chris Wielgus was aware of who she was. And knowing what she did about Banghart, she was willing to give her a shot.

That's all Banghart needed.

A three-year starter, she led the Big Green to two Ivy League titles in 1999 and 2000. She was a two-time first-team All-Ivy selection and set the Ivy League record with 273 career 3-pointers. All those achievements led to her being inducted into the Dartmouth Hall of Fame in 2004.

Always good at science, she pursued a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, with hopes of using it to eventually land a job as a college president. The prospect of working in higher education had always appealed to her. Coaching, however, hadn't. In fact, she didn't even view it as a vocation.

That opinion hadn't changed when Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, asked her to be its girls basketball coach when she was a college junior. She said no then. But when offered the job again a year later, she accepted it, albeit with the stipulations that she got to serve as the director of girls' athletics and teach a class. Even then, the decision surprised her father.

"I was like, 'Wow, I didn't expect you'd take a job like that with an Ivy League education,'" Jim said. "We expected that she might go a little bit different, a little bit more intellectual, a little bit more lucrative."

As far as Banghart was concerned, she still would.

Two years later, Wielgus asked Banghart to return to Dartmouth as an assistant coach. Banghart, then teaching biology and psychology at Episcopal, declined. But when Wielgus came back with the same offer a year later, Banghart said yes, only because Dartmouth agreed to cover the cost of her master's degree in writing and leadership development.

In four seasons as the Big Green's recruiting coordinator, Banghart traveled constantly. She made the most of it, though, as she wrote her graduate thesis on sport leadership, using her position to gain access to 20 of the country's most successful coaches – including Anson Dorrance, Geno Auriemma and Kay Yow – and to talk to them about what makes them great.

In May 2007, Banghart defended her thesis, a nearly 100-page oral history. Yet, that wasn't the only highlight of that week.

Within a few days, she turned 29, learned she and J.B. were finalists to be on the CBS show "The Amazing Race," and was asked to interview for the job as Princeton's head coach. Suddenly, she was at a crossroads. But with no concrete plans, she figured she should at least interview at Princeton.

As soon as she stepped on the campus, Banghart knew that's where she belonged.

"I was like, 'I can win here,'" she said. "I figured, 'I don't know if I want to college coach yet. But at 29, I'd rather give it a try and then at least at 35, if I don't like it, I can try something different. I still have plenty of years in my work life to figure that out.' And I haven't looked back."

Creating a contender

Gary Walters was only two years into his 20-year tenure as Princeton's athletic director when Banghart arrived at Dartmouth in 1996.

Watching her the next four years, he admired her competitiveness, ability and basketball instincts. And he hadn't forgotten any of those traits by the time the Tigers started contacting candidates for their vacant women's coaching job in 2007.

The initial impression Banghart made on Walters got her in the door. Her success as an assistant coach at Dartmouth further solidified her candidacy. But what played almost as much of a role as anything in her being selected as Princeton's ninth women's basketball coach was her general enthusiasm, which was evident from the moment she walked into her interview, Walters said.

"We probably interviewed about eight candidates," Walters said, "and even though she did not have head-coaching experience, what she had demonstrated was achievement at whatever she did. She was not afraid to break out of the mold.

"So, I guess in essence, it was not a difficult decision from my point of view. It was an easy decision, and thankfully, our leap of faith that we took in her paid off."

It might not have, though, if she hadn't gotten her players and recruits to believe not only in her, but in themselves.

The program that Banghart inherited had an all-time record of 442-442 and had never reached the NCAA Tournament in its 36 seasons. That, however, meant little to her. She knew what Princeton could become. And she implored everyone to not think of where it was but where it was going.

"I am the ultimate optimist and I am very consistently forward thinking," Banghart said. "I just don't spend much time thinking about the past. So, as much as perhaps for an autobiography or biography it would be great to talk about how I had this vision of coming in with a red cape and saving Princeton's basketball program, once I was the Princeton coach all I cared about was what we were doing forward."

A highly-touted prospect from North Mecklenburg High School in Huntersville, North Carolina, Devona Allgood had been recruited by Banghart when she was at Dartmouth. Allgood said Banghart always stood out to her as a coach who seemed more interested in the people than the actual games when she saw her at tournaments. But Allgood wasn't really interested in joining the Big Green.

Still, her mother always told her to be respectful to the coaches who recruited her. You never know, she'd say, where they might end up.

Then, one day, Allgood received a call from a phone number with a 609 area code. On the other end of the line was Banghart, making her first call from her new office phone. Not long after that, Allgood found herself on Princeton's campus, listening to Banghart's pitch.

"She was very candid, as always, about what the reality of the situation was," Allgood said, "knowing that, 'Yeah, this is not a team that you're going to walk on to and some magical team that you had dreamed of playing with your whole life. But we can create it.' She was so adamant about making sure she was recruiting players who wanted to create something.

"That was really the selling point. She got us to buy in, period. I think that's what made the team what it was and that's what carried us into the successes that we had because we knew we were having to create it ourselves."

And they did.

After going 7-23 and 14-14 in her first two seasons, Banghart led the Tigers to their first NCAA Tournament appearance during the 2009-10 campaign. Two years later, they became the first-ever Ivy League women's team to receive a national ranking.

As impressive as those accomplishments were, the 2014-15 season saw Princeton go 30-0 in the regular season and earn the No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament, the highest for an Ivy League program. The Tigers followed that up by winning their first NCAA Tournament game. And after the season, Banghart was named the Naismith National Coach of the Year.

What makes Banghart effective as a coach is she knows when to delegate tasks to others, said Blake Dietrick, a senior co-captain on the 2014-15 team. She's also aware of when to speak to the team as a whole or pull an individual player aside.

"If we needed to have a tough conversation, it would happen one-on-one in her office," said Dietrick, who played for the WNBA's Seattle Storm this past season. "It wasn't something that would be hashed out in front of the team. I have a lot of respect for that. It made me want to give her my absolute best, because I could tell that she respected me."

Perhaps even more importantly, every member of the team respected each other. That was even noticeable to Princeton alumnus Craig Robinson, the former Brown and Oregon State head men's basketball coach whose daughter, Leslie, played for the Tigers from 2014-18.

"When they were not on the court, those women did everything together," said Robinson, the brother of former first lady Michelle Obama. "Somehow, Courtney and her staff provided an ecosystem where those girls felt like they were a real team all the time.

"That helps you win games. I don't care what anybody says. I'll argue with any of the best coaches. If your team likes each other, they are going to be successful."

Saying goodbye

For as long as anyone in her family can remember, Banghart had talked about UNC being one of the few schools she would consider leaving Princeton for.

"We grew up in the days when UNC basketball, certainly on the men's side, was quite strong," J.B. said. "I think even when she was young that (going to Carolina) was something in the back of her mind as an aspirational goal."

It became even more appealing when Jen moved to Chapel Hill in 2006, when her husband enrolled in graduate school at UNC.

In the years since then, Jen had jokingly told her sister to just get in the ACC. Even if she went to NC State, Duke or Virginia, Jen and her family would be close enough to attend at least eight of Banghart's games and spend time with her. Jen had often thought about that on trips to Princeton.

"You wanted to support her," she said, "so it was easier for us to go up and have these vivid wishes, hopes and dreams of, 'Gosh, if we lived so close together, we'd be able to go to practice. We'd have our kids running around here. I could be such a more active part of this thing.'"

Nothing, however, influenced Banghart's decision more than the chance for her to spend more time with her 5-year-old twin boys and 3-year-old daughter.

At Princeton, practices were held from 5-7 p.m., meaning Banghart was often there or on the road recruiting instead of her kids' soccer games or family dinners. Whenever schools came calling and Princeton asked what it needed to do to keep her, Banghart always said the practice time was a nonstarter. She saw Chapel Hill as a place where she could be a parent.

Still, none of those factors made leaving Princeton any easier.

On April 29, two days before Banghart was officially announced as the Tar Heels' head coach, news of her hiring broke over social media. The plan had been to tell her team that she was leaving the next day. But suddenly, she was receiving a flurry of calls and texts from players, recruits and alums. The response was so overwhelming that she eventually had to turn her phone off for what she guessed was the first time since she arrived at Princeton.

The next morning, she fought back tears as she explained the reasoning for her decision.

"It breaks your heart because they came for you and they trusted you," Banghart said. "But I just kept reminding them that, 'I've told you guys to challenge yourself. I tell you guys to grow. I tell you guys to live life experiences. I need to do it, too.'

"And then I also told them, 'I need to be a parent. And this will allow me to be a different parent than I was able to be at Princeton. And that matters.'"

Everyone at Princeton seemed to understand.

Although she said she and her teammates never talked about Banghart leaving when she was at Princeton, Dietrick always thought it could happen. Once it did, she was thrilled to hear about her coach's new opportunity.

"She has great aspirations for herself as a coach, and I think an opportunity like coaching at UNC is extremely difficult to pass up," Dietrick said. "I think there were no hard feelings or anything of that nature."

Walters agreed.

"She has a great opportunity now to be at a school that can attract really great players like Princeton can't," he said. "She's got a little more latitude with regard to the pool that she's fishing in. So, I wish her nothing but the best. I mean, my goodness, what she did for Princeton, for women's basketball, it's really historic."

Allgood started considering that when she learned of Banghart's decision. She thought back to how people reacted when she chose to follow Banghart to Princeton instead of stay in North Carolina. Many people, she said, didn't think she made the right choice.

But as much as she accomplished during her Princeton career, she said it meant that much more to see a program like Carolina recognize what she, her teammates and all the Tigers who came after her did by hiring Banghart.

"To see that be something that's acknowledged and rewarded outside of Princeton makes it even sweeter," Allgood said, "and to me provides even more validation for what we experienced in our little Ivy League school."

'An obligation to do better'

Now at UNC, Banghart has the opportunity to do the same work with her players that she did at Princeton. For her, that starts on the court, but it extends much further than that.

"You want somebody who is going to prepare your child for the rest of your life, and Courtney is the person who can do that," Robinson said. "She's going to be a teacher, she's going to be a counselor, she's going to be a good role model. All of that will help your kids become the best person that they can become."

Banghart knows her first year will be hard as she tries to establish the right culture. She said a key component of that will be helping her players understand "who we are as teammates is who we are as a team."

At the same time, she plans on doing everything she can to send the seniors out the right way. That, however, doesn't mean she'll take a shortcut on the process of building a winning tradition similar to those of other Carolina teams.

"There are a lot of programs here that have hung a lot of national championship banners who would love the amount of support and resources that we have," Banghart said. "We have an obligation to do better with ours."

The Tar Heels took a small step toward that Thursday night, when they opened the 2019-20 season with a 92-55 win over Western Carolina. Afterward, Cunningham and other athletic administrators presented Banghart a No. 1 Carolina jersey and a congratulatory message from Roy Williams played on the videoboard. They'll try to take another on Monday as they host Navy for a 7 p.m. game.

What made Banghart's debut that much better was seeing her family in the stands.

"I'm not as sentimental as I should be, probably, because I was just excited to get started with these guys," Banghart said. "I did look over and right in the very first row was my family and they were all wearing Carolina shirts. To see my family so happy to be here has meant a lot to me. They've been really welcomed by the community and they really love this team."

That's exactly what she hoped for when she chose to leave Princeton.

"I wasn't running from anywhere and usually when you make a change, you're running from somewhere," she said. "So, I'm proud to say I was running to somewhere here. And that for me felt like that was what I was supposed to do – run to a place."

GoHeels Exclusive: Banghart Blazes Trail To Become Women's Basketball Head Coach

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