Beyond the Court: Coach Vanessa McClendon
01/31/2020
Vanessa McClendon is fast becoming a well-known name in the Pacific Northwest AAU district.
ORLANDO, Fla. - Vanessa McClendon is fast becoming a well-known name in the Pacific Northwest AAU district. Her team the Northwest Magic has grown exponentially since its inception in 2009. McClendon, a former professional basketball player, began her basketball career playing fifth and sixth grade boys before she joined a travel team under the AAU umbrella. From there, McClendon played for the University of Oregon, landing PAC 10 All-Freshman honors and accumulating most steals (52) in three years and second in team assists (89).
Her accolades led her to play overseas, where she lived in Spain, Australia and Germany. After so many years of play, her body decided it was time to take the sidelines. Following a brief stint in player development for the ABL team, Portland Fire, McClendon found herself coming full circle and founding the AAU club Northwest Magic.
How did you get into AAU?
VM: Well, I played basketball. I played - I actually started overseas, I was a military brat - with boys in fifth and sixth grade and when I moved to the States, I ended up playing on an organized travel team, and I played on my high school team. It was connected to the AAU, but I think back then we called them travel teams more than select teams. That was the beginning of my journey on the playing side and obviously from there, just loving the game and staying close to it through AAU, through high school. I played at the University of Oregon, played overseas for eight years and then when I circled back later in the years. I ended up training and subsequently started a team and obviously wanted to provide the same structure that I had growing up. I just kind of clicked on to AAU, and it walked me through starting my own program. Thirteen years later, here we are.
What drew you to coaching?
VM: When my knees couldn’t take it anymore, I ended up helping my friends and their kids who liked to play. I didn’t call myself a trainer, but I was helping them with their ball-handling and learn how to shoot. Then, I would go watch their games and realized they weren’t really doing what I was teaching them. So then I just said well, if you just had three or four more players, I’d make my own team. That initially didn’t work out. I would kind of coach on a team in Seattle, but I lived in Puyallup. The distance was too far, so I ended up breaking away. Eventually my love for training and doing things the right way forced me to start my own program, so then I can really help kids learn the game the way I was taught. I wanted to be more hands-on.
What is unique about the Northwest Magic?
VM: The fact that myself and a handful of my coaches, we’ve played at the college level. We’ve been where they want to go. So that’s unique about our side, especially on the girls’ side of Magic, we’re able to provide something really real. We’re able to provide some real experiences that they can learn from. We have structure in place. I think back to my AAU world and the things that were missing. I’m able to backtrack and put things in place by way of training, by way of the way practices are run, by way of teaching them at each level and making sure things are done before moving onto the next. So what makes us unique is that we’ve been there, and we’re able to teach from different aspects of it.
What do you want your athletes to walk away with?
VM: I want them to be able to be functioning, productive citizens. Basketball, sports in general, but speaking on basketball especially, being on a team teaches you so many life skills. How to communicate. Once our kids get to a certain age, we take parents out of the equation and we help them communicate with us so that when they get to the next phase, they’re able to communicate with college coaches. We hope in that way, they’ll able to communicate with their boss, to communicate with their co-workers. So being part of a team and all that comes with that- time management, how to go through the highs and lows, seeing your hard work pay off. In real life, if you want a promotion, seeing if you get that trophy on the court, we want them to be really ready for what’s next. We want them to walk away prepared for that. We hope that using basketball is a great way to do that.
We heard camps are in the future for the Magic. Can you tell me more about them?
VM: It’s something that’s in the works, but it’s going to be different and much more than just a camp. I had the great opportunity of reconnecting with my college teammates, and we just come from different worlds now. I train and coach, and one of my teammates, she refs at the highest level. I think she goes up to D2, and the other one, she’s in massage sports therapy. So from basketball, we’ve come back together and been putting our ideas together. We’re looking at starting a basketball retreat where we can provide a weekend or a full day of everything basketball. So if there’s an eighth-grade player who is really unsure of what it’s going to be like at the high school level, if there’s a high school player that is unsure of what it’s going to be like at the college level, we want to provide an experience for them. We’re still ironing out some details but essentially, it’s a basketball retreat where kids are going to be able to come and learn from maybe a WNBA player or college player. A lot of kids don’t know that refereeing or officiating is a great avenue to go after college. So just educating them, getting them through the recruiting process, talking to them about each phase of what they go through and the things that they could come in contact with, and offering them some seminars. It’s a lot of things in the works, so we’re just trying to curtail it down to some bullet points where they can walk away feeling like ‘Okay, I can see what I’m getting into,’ and being prepared for that.
Anything else?
VM: I feel like we’ve gotten some things right. We’re going on our 14th year now. We want to offer education to people who want to start their own organizations, but AAU is just a good structure. If you’re starting with something you have to start with systems. I’m appreciative of all the education that the AAU website alone offers for all the sports, but specifically for basketball. The Northwest Magic, we like to do things right so all of our programs are AAU members, we have the insurance. We want to make sure we’re tied into that, and people know that’s an avenue to go.
For more information on AAU Basketball, visit aaugirlsbasketball.org and aauboysbasketball.org
For more information on Northwest Magic, visit northwestmagic.org
Her accolades led her to play overseas, where she lived in Spain, Australia and Germany. After so many years of play, her body decided it was time to take the sidelines. Following a brief stint in player development for the ABL team, Portland Fire, McClendon found herself coming full circle and founding the AAU club Northwest Magic.
How did you get into AAU?
VM: Well, I played basketball. I played - I actually started overseas, I was a military brat - with boys in fifth and sixth grade and when I moved to the States, I ended up playing on an organized travel team, and I played on my high school team. It was connected to the AAU, but I think back then we called them travel teams more than select teams. That was the beginning of my journey on the playing side and obviously from there, just loving the game and staying close to it through AAU, through high school. I played at the University of Oregon, played overseas for eight years and then when I circled back later in the years. I ended up training and subsequently started a team and obviously wanted to provide the same structure that I had growing up. I just kind of clicked on to AAU, and it walked me through starting my own program. Thirteen years later, here we are.
What drew you to coaching?
VM: When my knees couldn’t take it anymore, I ended up helping my friends and their kids who liked to play. I didn’t call myself a trainer, but I was helping them with their ball-handling and learn how to shoot. Then, I would go watch their games and realized they weren’t really doing what I was teaching them. So then I just said well, if you just had three or four more players, I’d make my own team. That initially didn’t work out. I would kind of coach on a team in Seattle, but I lived in Puyallup. The distance was too far, so I ended up breaking away. Eventually my love for training and doing things the right way forced me to start my own program, so then I can really help kids learn the game the way I was taught. I wanted to be more hands-on.
What is unique about the Northwest Magic?
VM: The fact that myself and a handful of my coaches, we’ve played at the college level. We’ve been where they want to go. So that’s unique about our side, especially on the girls’ side of Magic, we’re able to provide something really real. We’re able to provide some real experiences that they can learn from. We have structure in place. I think back to my AAU world and the things that were missing. I’m able to backtrack and put things in place by way of training, by way of the way practices are run, by way of teaching them at each level and making sure things are done before moving onto the next. So what makes us unique is that we’ve been there, and we’re able to teach from different aspects of it.
What do you want your athletes to walk away with?
VM: I want them to be able to be functioning, productive citizens. Basketball, sports in general, but speaking on basketball especially, being on a team teaches you so many life skills. How to communicate. Once our kids get to a certain age, we take parents out of the equation and we help them communicate with us so that when they get to the next phase, they’re able to communicate with college coaches. We hope in that way, they’ll able to communicate with their boss, to communicate with their co-workers. So being part of a team and all that comes with that- time management, how to go through the highs and lows, seeing your hard work pay off. In real life, if you want a promotion, seeing if you get that trophy on the court, we want them to be really ready for what’s next. We want them to walk away prepared for that. We hope that using basketball is a great way to do that.
We heard camps are in the future for the Magic. Can you tell me more about them?
VM: It’s something that’s in the works, but it’s going to be different and much more than just a camp. I had the great opportunity of reconnecting with my college teammates, and we just come from different worlds now. I train and coach, and one of my teammates, she refs at the highest level. I think she goes up to D2, and the other one, she’s in massage sports therapy. So from basketball, we’ve come back together and been putting our ideas together. We’re looking at starting a basketball retreat where we can provide a weekend or a full day of everything basketball. So if there’s an eighth-grade player who is really unsure of what it’s going to be like at the high school level, if there’s a high school player that is unsure of what it’s going to be like at the college level, we want to provide an experience for them. We’re still ironing out some details but essentially, it’s a basketball retreat where kids are going to be able to come and learn from maybe a WNBA player or college player. A lot of kids don’t know that refereeing or officiating is a great avenue to go after college. So just educating them, getting them through the recruiting process, talking to them about each phase of what they go through and the things that they could come in contact with, and offering them some seminars. It’s a lot of things in the works, so we’re just trying to curtail it down to some bullet points where they can walk away feeling like ‘Okay, I can see what I’m getting into,’ and being prepared for that.
Anything else?
VM: I feel like we’ve gotten some things right. We’re going on our 14th year now. We want to offer education to people who want to start their own organizations, but AAU is just a good structure. If you’re starting with something you have to start with systems. I’m appreciative of all the education that the AAU website alone offers for all the sports, but specifically for basketball. The Northwest Magic, we like to do things right so all of our programs are AAU members, we have the insurance. We want to make sure we’re tied into that, and people know that’s an avenue to go.
For more information on AAU Basketball, visit aaugirlsbasketball.org and aauboysbasketball.org
For more information on Northwest Magic, visit northwestmagic.org
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