Dionnah Jackson-Durrett brings winning pedigree as basketball player and coach to UMKC

It’s the dog days of the summer, and on one rainy, dreary Thursday in July, the Kansas City Roos women’s basketball team is struggling.

Rain forced practice to be pushed back as the soccer team used the indoor court. Then the players came straight from a morning lift into fast, free-flowing drills designed to keep everybody moving and gasping for air. One full-court press drill, where each player hounds another dribbling the ball up the court, is particularly brutal.

Dionnah Jackson-Durrett doesn’t care about the circumstances.

The new UMKC head coach blows her whistle and chews out her team. The team’s effort is just not there today, she says. What’s the saying of the week?

Effort is non-negotiable, the team shouts back in response.

“Every team that I’ve ever coached, they’ve thought I was mean,” Jackson-Durrett said.

But Jackson-Durrett knows what it takes to succeed at the highest levels. She’s one of the best basketball players from St. Louis, a former star point guard at Oklahoma and a former assistant coach during Mississippi State’s near-championship runs under top coach Vic Schaefer.

Most recently, Jackson-Durrett worked as the associate head coach for Schaefer at Texas, where she often led the Longhorns at the start of timeouts.

“I gave her the first 30 seconds (of timeouts),” Schaefer said. “That was part of her growth, but not only that, that was what was best for our team. I listen to her in practice. I listen to her in games. I listen to her in huddles. And most of the time here in the last few years, I think I’ve listened to myself.”

Now, Jackson-Durrett will lead not just timeouts or huddles. She’s leading her own Division I program at UMKC.

Unlocking greatness

Jackson-Durrett wasn’t always the confident, stern leader her players now describe her as. Retired Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale, who recruited Jackson-Durrett, described the 2001 Missouri Player of the Year as shy and “super serious” during high school.

When the Sooners coach first went to Jackson-Durrett’s living room to chat with her and her mom, the then-high schooler was so shy, she barely made eye contact, Coale said.

“She listened intently,” Coale said, “and she had one question: Can she wear tall socks? She had socks that she wanted to wear and felt like they were a part of her juju when she played.

“I’ll never forget her asking me (that). We were going hard for her, and she said, as seriously as could be, as earnestly, ‘Will I be able to wear my socks?’ I was like, ‘Honey, you can wear whatever you want. If you come to Oklahoma and play, you can wear whatever you want.’”

As a freshman at Oklahoma, even playing with six seniors and behind All-American point guard Stacey Dales, Jackson-Durrett earned major minutes.

In one of Oklahoma’s games against Texas, the freshman missed a potential fourth-quarter game-winner on her go-to move — a spin move into a pull-up jump shot — before the Sooners lost in overtime.

“After the game, Coach Coale was getting on us,” Jackson-Durrett said. “Then she looks at me and says, ‘Any freshman that has the guts to take a shot like that in a moment like that, you have greatness in you.’”

But before she could unlock that greatness, Jackson-Durrett hit a snag her sophomore year. After the six seniors left from a 2002 Final Four team, the sophomore became the de facto leader of the team.

It was a role she said she wasn’t ready for.

Coale pushed her to be more vocal. The coach said the two had too many conversations to count about leadership and responsibility in her office, meetings that Jackson-Durrett said sometimes devolved into “knock-down, drag-out arguments.”

“Coach Coale was just on me all the time about talking and being vocal, and in my sophomore year, I just did not embrace it,” Jackson-Durrett said. “I tell my point guards now when I coach them, ‘As soon as you embrace it, you’re gonna be great. But as long as you fight it, it’s going to fight back.’”

Jackson-Durrett embraced “it” her junior year, eventually growing into the more vocal leader Coale envisioned in her junior year.

Those formative years at Oklahoma made Jackson-Durrett realize she wanted to be a coach after her playing career. That growth also helped vault her to the Sooners’ record books before she went on to the pros in the WNBA and overseas in Israel, Switzerland and Greece.

“She went from that kid in her living room who kept her gaze down at the floor and was very quiet, to a girl who I could turn the huddle over to and she would take charge of it all,” Coale said. “That sophomore year, it was just almost as if she grew right before my eyes from week to week. It was just one of the great rewards of my professional career to watch her grow up. Because that’s what she did, and she grew into this amazing young woman.”

‘It must be the shoes’

Jackson-Durrett’s tall socks weren’t the only superstitious piece of clothing she had as a player.

She said when she first started playing basketball in fifth grade, she was “just awful.” But longtime St. Louis basketball coach Gary Glasscock saw something in her even as a middle schooler at the Mathews Dickey Boys & Girls Club.

“Other people didn’t see it, but I just saw a kid who could grow mostly because of her tremendous work ethic and how serious she was about the game,” Glasscock said. “She didn’t always believe in herself, and I just told her, ‘Stick with it. You’re going to be good.’”

The way Jackson-Durrett describes her progress as a player: in one summer, after one game, she just was good. In that game, Jackson-Durrett wore new shoes: a pair of black Nikes with a blue sole.

“I was just doing things (Glasscock) had taught me,” Jackson-Durrett said. “He’s watching off of the court, and every time I made a basket, he’s yelling, ‘It must be the shoes! It must be the shoes!’ the whole game.”

Jackson-Durrett said she loved that pair of shoes. But her high school coach at Parkway West didn’t like black shoes.

At that point in her career, shoes, socks, or barefoot, she was still one of the best high schoolers in the nation. Part of what set Jackson-Durrett apart as a player was her defensive ability, Glasscock said.

The coach should know: Jackson-Durrett played for his AAU program, but Glasscock had to face her during the high school season as he coached an opposing school. In one Christmas tournament game, she was playing against Glasscock’s Cor Jesu team while her older sister LaTonya Jackson was an assistant coach at Parkway West.

“The game was on the line,” Jackson said. “The ball was going out of bounds, and we thought the game was over. Dionnah (Jackson-Durrett) actually ran from one end of the court to the other.”

“She was so fast that she out-ran the ball and was down the court in two or three seconds and scored to win the game,” Glasscock said.

Glasscock called Jackson-Durrett one of the greatest players to ever come out of the St. Louis area. He also coached St. Louis standout and former WNBA player Niele Ivey — currently the head coach at Notre Dame.

Growing up, Jackson-Durrett followed her older sister and Ivey, Jackson’s best friend, everywhere. Ivey became a mentor for Jackson-Durrett, who she called her “baby sister.” After Ivey won St. Louis player of the year honors in 1996, Jackson-Durrett won the same award five years later.

When Ivey became a coach after finishing her WNBA playing career, Jackson-Durrett was a first-round draft pick in the WNBA. She followed Ivey’s coaching path five years later, getting her first job at Southeast Missouri State. Just as Ivey had been a mentor for her as a player, Ivey also became a mentor for Jackson-Durrett as a coach.

But at the Final Four in 2018, the friendship and mentorship had to be put aside: Ivey’s Notre Dame team faced Jackson-Durrett’s Mississippi State team in the national championship.

Jackson cut a T-shirt for both teams in half to wear during the game. And while Ivey’s Fighting Irish beat Jackson-Durrett’s Bulldogs, the then-Notre Dame associate head coach remembers thinking it was a special moment.

“We both came from a really rough part of St. Louis. Normally, you don’t make it out of where we came from,” Ivey said. “Knowing where we came from, the sacrifices that we made, the sacrifice that our parents made to get us to this point, and to be able to achieve the success we’ve made, it’s just an absolute blessing.”

“Then, when we saw each other for us to see each other in the 2018 championship that was so bittersweet. But for us to be playing on the last day of the year was so special.”

Point guard guru

When she made the leap to coaching, Jackson-Durrett quickly built a reputation as one of the top point guard mentors in college basketball. At Southeast Missouri State, she helped coach Bianca Beck into an overseas career. In her next stop at George Mason, Jackson-Durrett developed Taylor Brown and Jasmine Jackson.

That reputation helped her land the assistant coaching job at Mississippi State in 2015 under Schaefer. His staff normally includes coaches he knows well, including several of his former players.

But he didn’t know Jackson-Durrett personally before Coale suggested her.

“I haven’t had a lot of turnover in my career,” Schaefer said. “So I always take my time and due diligence and really do my research. And obviously everything I found going in was true.”

Jackson-Durrett’s mentorship of guards Morgan William, Victoria Vivians and Jazzmun Holmes at Mississippi State was key to the Bulldogs’ back-to-back runs to the national championship game.

Holmes, who joined Schaefer’s staff at Texas, decided to follow Jackson-Durrett to UMKC. According to the Roos’ director of basketball operations, the UMKC version of Jackson-Durrett is mellow. At Mississippi State, Jackson-Durrett kicked Holmes out of practice twice during her freshman year.

Four months after being hired, Jackson-Durrett hasn’t kicked anyone out of practice.

For as intense as Jackson-Durrett is in practice and on the court — a testament to the influence of Coale and Schaefer — she is just as concerned about her players when it comes to their well-being off the court.

Assistant coach Sandra Abston played for Jackson-Durrett at George Mason. At one point in her college career, Abston, who is from Sweden, decided to leave.

“I was going through some things,” Abston said. “I ended up leaving campus, and I was just like, ‘I’m going home to Sweden. I can’t do this anymore.’”

All the other coaches on the George Mason staff texted Abston. But Jackson-Durrett drove an hour to Abston’s place off campus to check in.

“She took me out to eat and was just like, ‘How are you doing? What can I do for you?’” Abston said. “And that just speaks to her character because she is the most competitive person I know. But she also has the biggest heart. And you just feel it.”

Jackson-Durrett’s support of her players also extends to equality and helping them “understand their history.” At Mississippi State, the coach always brought a Black History Month quote every day in February.

At Texas, she supported the team amid an ongoing controversy about the problematic history of the Texas fight song, “The Eyes of Texas.” Jackson-Durrett helped the team make a series of videos during Black History Month called the Brown Skin Girls Series.

So when the opportunity to coach at UMKC came, athletic director and vice chancellor Brandon Martin’s efforts to diversify the Kansas City university certainly did not hurt.

Jackson-Durrett had already been considering head coaching positions. Schaefer said the two had started “trying to be selective” in the positions she applied for about three years ago. He helped her prepare, whether that meant postgame radio show interviews, meetings with boosters and leading the timeout huddles.

After Jackson-Durrett’s first conversation with Martin, her agent told her he saw “bigger things, bigger programs” in the cards for her. After all, Jackson-Durrett had just been in the running to coach at her alma mater, Oklahoma, the year prior.

But when Martin flew to Austin right after the Longhorns lost to Stanford in the Elite Eight, she knew UMKC was the place for her.

“He’s a Black male, and I’m a Black female,” Jackson-Durrett said. “And giving opportunity and representation matters to both of us. I couldn’t pass on that … I knew in talking to him that he was going to let me be the Black woman that I needed to be to help you know, these young ladies.”

So Kansas City it is. The head coach is ready to be back in the Midwest and closer to home. Jackson-Durrett faces a tall task: trying to improve upon a team that won 23 wins (the most a UMKC women’s basketball team has won this century) and finished third in the Summit League.

But she’s already making her mark on the program, rebuilding the roster with the three top transfers of Rain Green, Jamiya Turner and E’Lease Stafford.

And if there’s anything Jackson-Durrett has learned throughout her career, whether it’s from Glasscock, Ivey, Coale or Schaefer, it’s how to push a team in practice.

After the players finished basketball practice on that Thursday in July, Jackson-Durrett led the team out for conditioning: 100-meter sprint repeats on the track almost four hours after they started their morning in the weight room.

After all, effort is non-negotiable for Jackson-Durrett.