ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne is taking a season off after 15 straight years at the helm of the ASU women’s basketball team.
At a press conference on Tuesday afternoon at Wells Fargo Arena, Turner Thorne said she is leaving the team for nine months, starting July 1, for her own personal growth and development.
“After 23 years straight coaching, I’m going to have the opportunity to take some time for personal growth, definitely professional growth, and to reconnect with my family,” Turner Thorne said. “For that, I am very, very grateful.”
Turner Thorne said she made the decision to take her leave not long after the season ended, and after looking at both her professional and personal lives over the last couple seasons.
“This job has changed a lot, so I really feel like when the season ended, I was noticing that I was losing my balance,” she said. “Any coach will tell you, you can be all-consumed. I feel like I was there, and I needed to step back and evaluate that.”
She also stressed that she has no intention of leaving the program for good, and will return as head coach next March, after the 2011-12 season is completed.
Filling in next season as interim head coach is Joseph Anders, who has been on the ASU staff for 10 years, and has been coaching for 25 years. Anders said he is excited for the opportunity to take the lead, and doesn’t foresee any problems with the transition.
“Basketball doesn’t change, and in terms of the kids and in terms of the program, I’ve been able to be in pretty much everybody’s home that is a part of this program today,” Anders said. “I look forward for us to take it higher and higher and further and further.”
The nine-month leave of absence prompted speculation that Turner Thorne was taking a maternity leave of sorts, but she dispelled that theory in her opening statement.
“No, I am not pregnant,” she said.
Last season ASU went 20-11 and finished third in an extremely competitive Pac-10 conference. However, the Sun Devils faltered in the postseason, falling in the second round of the Pac-10 tournament to California and then in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Temple.
As for next season, neither Turner Thorne nor Anders anticipates any big changes to the team’s playing style.
“I believe in pressure defense, same as coach (Turner Thorne), I believe in up-tempo, same as coach, I believe in playing the game of basketball the way it should be played, with heart and with passion,” Anders said. “Will we possibly see some new wrinkles? Absolutely. What those wrinkles are? Come out and see us play next season.”
After being such a dynamic figure on the bench for ASU for such a long time, it will be strange to not see Turner Thorne courtside. But she said everyone, including the team, was very understanding.
“I think the players were amazingly understanding,” Turner Thorne said. “I’m not going to be coaching them but I’ll be watching them, and I know that they’re going to represent this program and ASU very, very well.”
The Sun Devils won’t play their season opener until November, but the team has summer workouts and practice in the fall.
For Turner Thorne, letting all of that go and watching from the stands will be extremely difficult.
“This is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done in my entire life,” she said. “To step away from something that’s been a part of everything you do everyday for 15 years, it’s tough.”
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
