SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Rebecca Lobo had just finished broadcasting Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever’s nationally televised victory over the New York Liberty last month when she rushed to the airport to catch a flight back home to Connecticut.
She had another game the next day— and she was coaching in this one.
Lobo has been coaching her son, Thomas, on his AAU team since he was in the seventh grade. That team, CT Force, was playing in the second day of a tournament in Springfield, Massachusetts, close to where the Hall of Famer grew up.
But even if travel delays prevented her from getting there, Lobo wasn’t worried. She knew Jen Rizzotti would be.
The two stars from UConn’s 1995 women’s national championship basketball team have been co-coaching since Rizzotti moved back to Connecticut to take over as the Sun’s president in 2021 and was looking for an AAU team for her son, Conor.
“It’s been a blast because we were super close in college and after college, and then when she went down to D.C. we lost a little contact,” Lobo said. “Now we get to see each other through the spring and through the fall.”
It’s hard to miss a lot of the unselfish play and style the Huskies greats learned in their time under Geno Auriemma and Chris Dailey, who just finished off their 40th year at the school. Lobo and Rizzotti have instilled that in their boys’ team.
Lobo laughed at the notion that they were the younger version of the Hall of Fame coaches, although she acknowledged that Rizzotti, who takes the lead as coach in most of the games, has the same fiery passion as Auriemma.
After one play in the boys’ game when an official made a call she didn’t agree with, the former point guard said something to him. As she walked away, the referee warned her, saying that he heard what she had muttered under her breath and to knock it off, which drew a chuckle from Rizzotti.
Handing the clipboard over to Rizzotti when she moved back to Connecticut was a no-brainer for Lobo. Rizzotti had been a head coach at both Hartford and George Washington for two decades before coming to the Sun.
“One thing I’m not is stupid. And like, I think I know basketball pretty well,” Lobo said. “I didn’t coach in college for 20-plus years like she did. It’s incredible what she does with these kids. Because it’s in practices, not only game strategy, where she’s elite.”
Besides coaching on the bench, Lobo mused that her role off the court is to be the one to tell the kids to put their phones away when they are out to dinner — a Dailey trait.
Coaching her son’s team has allowed Rizzotti to spend more time with him.
“If we were at home, he’d want to be going to hang out with his friends or he’s in his room sleeping,” Rizzotti said. “We get a lot of time in the car together. We hang out after the games and have meals together. It’s time that I’ll always cherish and I’ll never have again with him.”
Rizzotti said her son will get mad at her and talk back, but she has seen how much working together has meant to his game and their relationship.
“She knows what she’s talking about and it feels great that I can go out there and listen to my coach and know that she’s right, like, every time,” Conor said. “So it’s awesome playing with these guys and being able to play under her, because we just work so well together.”
Their team won the tournament game on that Sunday relatively easily. Lobo graciously took photos between games with players from the girls’ AAU teams and talked with players and parents on the boys’ side. That’s the norm at these tournaments.
Lobo recalled being in Atlantic City for a tournament and a group of boys came up to her on the boardwalk asking for a photo. One of them was wearing a Clark jersey. Before she took the photos, she asked them to name a few other WNBA players and they obliged, rattling off stars of the women’s league.
“I was like, this is amazing,” she said.
The championship game — one of many titles the team has won — gave Rizzotti a chance to coach against another female head coach, a rarity in boys’ AAU basketball. Rizzotti had seen a couple of female coaches on the sidelines at this tournament, but hadn’t come across a female head coach until the finale.
Unfortunately, she’s seen the ego of some male coaches get in the way at tournaments.
“There’s not a whole lot of men that want to lose to a woman standing on the other sideline and things get said or done that maybe they wouldn’t do in other games,” Rizzotti said. “If they’re up like five or six points they’d start stalling with like seven or eight minutes to go because there’s no shot clock and they don’t want to lose to us.”
Rizzotti said she handled that by walking to halfcourt and saying something about trying to make the players better.
“Like, stalling with seven minutes left?” Rizzotti said. “The parents hear me and I’m like, ‘This is what you’re paying for?’”
Both Lobo and Rizzotti said they will be sad when this is over in a few weeks. There’s one more tournament in the area, then a trip to Myrtle Beach to close out the season. Neither plans to coach another boys’ AAU team when this is done.
“I’m gonna miss it, like, just really, really miss it,” Lobo said. “This is the end of it. I don’t really have interest in coaching another team that doesn’t have my son on it.”
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