As the morning sun began to ascend, dribbling basketballs and shoe squeaks echoed around Mott Athletic Center. Players talked amongst themselves as they stretched and laced their shoes.
At about 6:45 a.m., the gym doors swung open, while a booming “Let’s Go!” erupted from a hooded figure strolling in. The team joined in with yells of their own, and practice was underway.
The hooded figure is Cal Poly women’s basketball head coach Shanele Stires, who fittingly wears a sweatshirt reading “They Sleep, We Hoop.”
After playing professionally in the WNBA and coaching stops at institutions all over the country, such as the University of San Francisco, the University of Nebraska-Omaha and most recently, Cal State East Bay, Stires finds herself on the Central Coast and at the heart of a surging women’s basketball program at Cal Poly.
“She shows us how to love hard, how to play hard, how to be great people every single day,” sophomore forward Sierra Lichtie said. “She brings that heat and fire every day no matter what’s going on outside of basketball.”
A Fighting Spirit
Stires didn’t hit the ground running when starting basketball in her youth. Her playing career began with her being cut from the school team in both 8th and 9th grade.
“Basketball did not come easily to me,” Stires said. “But it taught me a lot about resilience.”
She would lace up for Cloud Community College in her first year after high school before transferring to Kansas State, where she would go on to have a rewarding career. As a 5-foot-11 forward, Stires found success by earning a reputation as a scrappy, hardnose player.
“I wasn’t deterred by the fact that coaches didn’t think I was good enough,” Stires said. “That includes junior high, high school, the college level and even the pro level.”
She scored over 1,344 points in her Kansas State career and, after graduation, earned a spot in the now-defunct American Basketball League with the Columbus Quest. She then spent three years in the WNBA with the Minnesota Lynx and played overseas in Greece, Portugal and Sweden.
Career post-playing days
As her professional playing days came to a close, she began to wonder what life would look like after basketball.
Stires started working at a bakery in Minnesota to learn the ins and outs of business entrepreneurship. During this period, she wondered if this was the path she was meant to follow.
But it felt like something was missing.
“When I envisioned life without basketball, I thought I wanted to try coaching before I exit,” she said.
She began to pursue a career in coaching, and eventually, an opportunity presented itself to work as an assistant coach at Ohio State University.
“I fell in love with it immediately,” Stires said.
It was during her time at Ohio University that Stires would meet Samba Johnson, the team’s recruiting coordinator and current assistant coach at Cal Poly.
“The first couple months between us were rocky,” Johnson laughed. “We would argue like brother and sister.”
As time went on, the two developed a strong relationship and eventually established an unbreakable bond that still persists today.
During their time at Ohio University, Johnson’s mother passed away. It was Stires who drove him over three hours through a snowstorm to take him back home.
With a relationship forged, Stires and Johnson came to an agreement.
“Whichever one of us gets a head division one job, the other one is coming as second in command,” Johnson recalled.
Almost 20 years later, Stires accepted the job at Cal Poly. She first called her father. The next person she called was Johnson, telling him, “We’re going to Cal Poly.”
Setting the Framework
Stires has a unique coaching perspective: she’s played every role on a team and coached at almost every level of basketball.
According to the team’s leading scorer, Annika Shah, her constant energy became contagious.
When there’s a lapse in focus in practice, Stires will suddenly burst out with an exclamation, “I ain’t got no eligibility left!”
Stires’ goal is to fill the team with players who think alike and reflect the program’s core values: humble, hungry and smart.
The emerging culture of the program can be compared to a developing language in which the team is all learning to speak together.
“If you’re speaking French, and you’re speaking German, and neither of you speak English – you can still figure some stuff out, but more than likely it’s gonna take you guys a while,” Stires said in an interview on The Gallop podcast in November 2023.
By finding players who embody the core values, she hopes these athletes will be able to become fluent on the court.
“That’s what that language does for us, it allows for us to really have great team chemistry because we’re all operating on the same level,” Stires said.
With nine newcomers, the returners were tasked with taking on leadership roles and representing this teamwide culture.
“I’ve really been able to rely on them,” Stires said about the returners. “They’ve led the way in terms of building a player-led culture, which is really what we want. We feel like the best teams are ones where the players work with the coaches.”
Establishing an Identity
Everyone in the gym heard a smack as a player lost the ball, but no whistle was blown. The ball slowly dribbled past Shah, but another player beat her to the ball.
Stires raced up the court, blowing her whistle, “Annika! You got to get the ball!”
A minimal protest came from Shah before responding, “Yes, coach”.
Shah would make up for her lack of effort, not even a full five minutes later, by throwing her body in front of a player driving to the rim. This time, there were screams of joy coming from Stires as she ran over to high-five Shah for drawing the charge.
It’s this type of play that symbolizes the emerging culture within the team, and Stires is building the foundation.