A Lifelong Learner: The DeUnna Hendrix Story

DeUnna Hendrix is always evolving.
 
Put simply, the Miami University women’s basketball coach is constantly trying to learn and get better.
 
Better as a coach. Better as a leader. Better as a human.
 
“What are general things that successful people do? What are the habits? Then I try to incorporate those,” Hendrix said.
 
For Hendrix, that means a lot of reading, a lot of listening to podcasts, a lot of meditating and a lot of intentional conversations with other people to gain insight.
 
Conversations with other coaches. Conversations with other leaders. Conversations with other humans.
 
“I think what makes her a great coach is that she has a continuous growth mindset,” said Miami assistant Hailey Yohn. “She is literally trying every single day to better herself…
 
“She continually wants to not only grow herself, but she wants to make people around her better. She’s challenging us as a staff and as a team: How can you get better for the next day?”
 
That open-minded approach and leadership style has made an impact on the RedHawk players.

“The head coach position can be such a power position: ‘I’m the dictator, and you listen to me.’ Coach is the complete opposite of that,” said senior guard Peyton Scott. “She wants to be an educator. She wants to be a learner. She wants to be a mentor to everybody. I think that’s just the epitome of who she is.

 

“She’s always learning. She’s always asking questions…she’s having coaches’ huddles with D-III, D-II, high school, AAU coaches…she understands that there’s so much potential around her, and she taps into it. It’s been incredible to see over the four years that I’ve been here.”

 

Hendrix has always wanted to learn more about the game, dating back to her days growing up in Kokomo, Ind. “I would always ask a ton of questions, I would watch my mom, and I’d be drawing on boards everywhere,” she laughed.

 

Hendrix’s mother — and her ‘hero’— Robin Hendrix led Truett-McConnell Junior College to a national championship in 1980 and eventually transferred to Middle Tennessee State to finish her career. A 6-foot-3 center, Robin Hendrix still holds MTSU records for rebounds in a single game (27) and season (447). She produced 25 double-doubles during the 1980-81 campaign and was named first-team All-Conference, finishing her time in Murfreesboro with career averages of 17.7 points and 13.8 rebounds per game.

 

“She just instilled the game in me so much and so often,” the Miami coach recalled. That led to ‘Globetrotter shows’ in the family’s basement, where grade-schooler DeUnna decided to monetize her up-and-coming hoops skills at a young age.

 

“Lynette Woodard was the first female Harlem Globetrotter, and I wanted to be Lynette Woodard,” said Hendrix. “I would run these basement shows and my sister would take admission money at the door. We’d invite the neighborhood kids: A quarter for an hour. Everybody had an allowance!

 

“It was a whole dribbling act. I could spin the ball on all of my fingers, I would throw pencils out, or I’d grab a book. Anything I could balance on.

 

“We’d play kickball right after…but they had to watch me first!”

 

So yes, DeUnna Hendrix grew up with basketball.  But did daughter ever challenge mother to a game of one-on-one?

 

“No, I’m not crazy! No way. She was strong. She’s a firefighter. I’m not doing that!”

 

DeUnna went on to win a state championship as a senior at Kokomo High School on a star-studded team featuring six future Division I players that finished the year unbeaten and ranked No. 14 in the nation. She would later be inducted into the Howard County Sports Hall of Fame for her accomplishments on the hardwood, an honor also bestowed upon her mother a few years earlier.

 

The younger Hendrix continued her playing career at the University of Richmond, where she was a two-time team captain and helped the Spiders qualify for the 2005 NCAA Tournament.

 

Before long, she was a basketball coach.

“I always knew I wanted to coach before I even knew I wanted to play,” Hendrix said. “Watching Pat Summitt, I’d get emotional…coaching was always a thing [for me].”

 

Stops as an assistant at Jacksonville and High Point led to Hendrix accepting her first head coaching job a decade ago, taking over the High Point program. She spent seven seasons in charge of the Panthers before making the move to Oxford, including guiding HPU to a pair of WNIT appearances.

 

Since coming to Miami, she has worked tirelessly to develop and implement a culture in and around her team that is both special and unique. Hendrix emphasizes the importance of the people in her program being ‘good humans’, spreading ‘love and light’, and ‘standing for something’. She has often said that she wants to have the most diverse team in the country.

 

“Diversity of thought is important,” Hendrix explained. “You can’t talk about developing people in a homogeneous environment…when they go out into the real world and they have to work with coworkers that think differently, what do you do then?

 

“I try to think of us as a small ecosystem. This is our small unit of the world. How can we best prepare them to deal with different conflicts healthily and how do we best prepare them to figure out what the commonalities are? What’s the one thing that’s going to pull us together?

 

“It’s a beautiful thing to do when you get it. And it’s really hard.”

 

Senior forward Amani Freeman used the phrase ‘personable’ to describe Hendrix. Not strictly in the sense of the dictionary definition of ‘having a pleasant appearance and manner’, but rather because the fourth-year Miami coach is concerned about the entire person.

 

“She treat us as people before students and even before athletes, just caring about our well-being as a whole,” Freeman said. “On top of that, she’s really preparing us for what’s next.

 

“I think I’ve learned more applicable life lessons just from practicing with her and being in this program than I ever expected, so it’s been a learning journey.”

 

Hendrix admitted her emphasis on culture can be misunderstood. “‘Culture’ gets thrown around a lot, and people think it’s and/or. Like you’re either working on your culture or winning. No, you’re working on your culture to ultimately win.

 

“But the ‘culture’ piece is every second, every hour, every day. It’s being super intentional what [our] conversations sound like, and why that’s important.”

 

Hendrix oversees a staff made up of assistant coaches Yohn, Tiffany Swoffard and Lindsay Hieronymus and director of basketball operations Megan Belke. It’s the only coaching staff in the conference that is 100% female.

 

“She’s very much about women empowerment,” said Yohn, who first started working for Hendrix at High Point in 2015. “She always tells us she wants her players to see themselves, women, in those positions of power…to see who they’re going to be when they get older.”

 

“We just celebrated 50 years of Title IX,” added Scott. “I think it’s awesome that we have an all-woman coaching staff…it’s something we don’t take for granted.”

 

Freeman agreed. “Having all females on the staff does make us really close,” she said. “We talk about a lot of personal things outside of basketball: anything we need help with. We’re just all really connected.”

 

Hendrix said the progress women’s athletics has made in the past half century inspires and drives her toward continuing to make an impact as a female leader for the next generation of female leaders.

 

“The reasons for success for me have changed significantly,” Hendrix said. “You always want to be the best when you’re doing anything, right? What are the big accomplishments that you can attain?

 

“It’s NOT that for me anymore. It’s very much, ‘How can I set a stage for someone else to have a stage?’

 

“Those changes that were made during Title IX? If that progress wasn’t made, I don’t think that way…that had to be a foundation that was laid for me.”

 

– – –

 

A person’s bookshelves almost always reveal something of their personality and their philosophy.

 

Hendrix’s home library is no exception.

 

Perhaps no title on her shelves has impacted her approach to her life and work the way that Golf EQ has. The back cover of Dr. Izzy Justice’s book says it helps ‘build your own mental plan to allow you to perform at your best when it matters most.’

 

While Hendrix obviously coaches a different sport, the concepts in Golf EQ about emotional intelligence have been revolutionary for both her and the young women she leads.

 

Scott first encountered the book shortly after a tough game at Central Michigan in 2020. “I don’t like to call myself a hothead, but I was very over the top passionate,” she remembered. “I was very emotional. And it got to a point where, if I’m going to be a leader for this team, I can’t act like that…

 

“When we got back from the trip the next day, she pulled me into her office and we broke down emotional intelligence. She gave me that book.”

 

The image of a stoplight on the front cover illustrates Justice’s main point, that rational and emotional thinking is only possible when operating in the ‘green’ and not getting worked up into the ‘red.’ Hendrix preaches this emotional consistency (and models it as well) to her coaches and players on a daily basis.

 

 “When you’re in the red, at this emotionally high state, you’re not good for anybody,” said Scott. “You can’t think, you can’t process, you can’t act on what you want to be, and once you get in that state, it takes you four hours to get out of it…

 

“Ever since then, I’ve been able to understand what it looks like and feels like to be steady. I think it’s shown through the improvement of my game, the improvement of my leadership, the improvement of how good of a teammate I am and just how consistent I am on a daily basis.”

 

Yohn echoed that sentiment. “It was that game where Peyton realized, ‘I do really need to check myself. “It’s emotional intelligence: that’s the biggest thing ‘D’ is about. She could do a seminar or teach a class about it…from that game on, [although Scott] is one of the most competitive people I’ve ever been around, on and off the court, she learned how to channel that into a positive way and control her emotions and get to a point of productiveness.”

 

That’s one example of how Hendrix’s curiosity impacts her coaching. There are certainly dozens more. Probably hundreds or thousands, in fact. And she’s excited to see how the life lessons the RedHawks have learned the past few years will translate to increased success on the floor in the upcoming season. Miami returns four of its top six scorers from 2021-22, including Scott (19.2 ppg) and Freeman, and hopes are high for the upcoming campaign.

 

“I truly feel like we can do all things,” Hendrix said. “We just check in and go to work…and when you do that so long, so often, at some point you know it’s going to pay off.

 

“We feel very good about the steps we’ve taken and what we have laid. We just know great things take time, and we’ll get there.”

 

It might be a process. It might not happen overnight, as the RedHawks work to blend talented newcomers with experienced contributors heading into Mid-American Conference play this winter. There may even be a learning curve in store as the team grows together.

 

But learning is what DeUnna Hendrix does best.

 

Hendrix’s RedHawks host Malone Tuesday, Nov. 1 in an exhibition to prepare for the 2022-23 regular-season opener Monday, Nov. 7 against Xavier in Millett Hall. Miami Women’s Basketball season tickets and single-game tickets are on sale now!

 

Find more Front Row Features at MiamiRedHawks.com/FrontRowFeatures.