Head Coach Cheryl Reeve led the Minnesota Lynx to their fourth WNBA title in seven years, an unprecedented championship record
Washington Township native Cheryl Reeve has completed her eighth year as the head coach for the Minnesota Lynx with her fourth WNBA title in seven years when the Lynx defeated the Los Angeles Sparks in the fifth game of the finals on Oct. 4, an accomplishment that is unprecedented in the league. Looking back to her time on the Washington Township High School girls basketball “South Jersey team of the decade” in 1984, Reeve said it was the people who demanded the best of her in high school that led to her journey of championships.
Reeve’s retired military family settled to Washington Township in 1981, her sophomore year of high school, where she found a home on the Minutemaid basketball team under the direction of coach Dawn Bunting. By her senior year in 1984, the team had five players who would move on to play as Division I athletes in college.
Reeve attended La Salle University where she began her coaching career as an assistant coach for two seasons. During the summer prior to her senior year, Reeve worked with the Cathy Rush Basketball Camp where she was able to experience for the first time the interaction with young people, teaching them the game, a profession she fell in love with.
“You don’t sit behind a desk in your early jobs going, ‘here’s how my career is going to work out, I’m going to end up being a WNBA coach of a championship team,’” Reeve said. “You do think about aspirations of becoming a good coach, getting the opportunity to compete in a championship; you dream about those things.”
Reeve said she paid her dues as an assistant coach for 10 years prior to joining the Minnesota Lynx as the head coach in December 2009, leading teams such as the WNBA Charlotte Sting, Cleveland Rockers and Detroit Shock. Prior to the WNBA, Reeve spent 12 years coaching at the collegiate level.
“So much of a person’s career is being at the right place at the right time, and I would say that is absolutely the case with my time here in Minnesota,” Reeve said. “It was meant to be; we’ve had an amazing time together.”
According to Reeve, the Lynx’s success comes from a combination of talent and character.
“In anything you do, you need to have a certain ability for your craft, but it doesn’t stop there,” Reeve said. “We have really unselfish people who are in the core of this thing. By caring about each other first, caring about the team first, those are qualities we look for in anybody we bring into our group. That’s what allows us to reach these heights.”
According to the Lynx website, www.lynx.wnba.com, in 2016 Reeve was named the WNBA Coach of the Year, possessing the most coaching wins in franchise history with a career record of 168–70. In 2014, Reeve was the assistant coach for the U.S.A. women’s basketball team, which took gold at the FIBA World Championship that year with a 6–0 record.
Through it all, Reeve said she’s still reminded of her teammates and coach Bunting when she watches her players take the court.
“We are demanding of ourselves, we push each other, we play for each other and all of those characteristics remind me of my time in Township with the group we had there,” Reeve said. “You don’t know it at the time, but the way Dawn drove us, challenged us, now I’m that person. It’s where it all started in terms of my developing an identity as a person, as a player.”
Reeve said the key to success is having passion, even if finding that passion is a journey in itself. In all aspects of life, she said, the four Ps of being a champion — preparation, passion, perseverance and principles — are universal.
“Nothing easy is worth having. It requires you to have a commitment and a fortitude, and at the end of the day a passion,” Reeve said. “Control what you can control, and that’s how hard you work.”
