Denise McClanahan has been contributing to girls basketball in Indiana for over 35 years, from creating training camps to coaching AAU and high school teams and even creating a summer league. She is a year-round leader and influencer in the game of basketball, especially for young girls.
In high school, she was a four-year letter winner in basketball, swimming and diving and track. After high school, she played basketball at Central Michigan, Butler University and IUPUI on a full scholarship.
At the young age of 19, she founded her first training camp. The first two years, it was a day camp and then was turned into High-Intensity Basketball. Later, she created the Lady Mac High School Team summer league. The legacy of ¨Coach Mac¨ is creating a place where each program she directed, and each camp she established, girls were given a chance to play the sport they love, allowing them to get better at the game; even if they were not the number one girl on their team.
“My favorite part is just getting to see the person develop as a player and most importantly see them grow as a person off the court,” Mac said.
Since the third grade, Mac knew she wanted to coach basketball. She started playing with the boys on her street, and her love for the sport blossomed from there.
“I always had a grandfather and a father who talked to me about basketball as I was learning it,” Mac said. “[I] had a lot of mentors that coached me, or took an interest in me, and it was through seeing them that I just found that it was a passion of mine and some way to give back.”
Throughout her years of playing, those coaches and mentors helped her improve as a player, and taught her about what it takes to be a good coach.
“Some coaches I took what not to do,” Mac said. “I pretty much found something with each coach that was valuable to implement into my own philosophy, as well as things that maybe I felt like, as an athlete, I didn’t respond well with, to avoid.”
Her philosophy is “Whether it was in season or out of season, if you’re not having fun in some way, or building relationships and bonds with the people you’re coming across, then why would you do the activity.”
Her main goal in coaching is to send her players out into the real world equipped to be service-oriented. “I have had former players who have been on the president’s detail. I have had players who are helping to bring products for diabetes patients’ dialysis into their homes. I have had players who are lawyers and coaching Big Ten basketball teams right now,” Mac said. “And that is really what I have accomplished, just the small way in which our lives have intersected and hopefully give them an example of how to be service-oriented.”
She chose to create and coach many summer leagues, AAU teams and high school teams to give each player a chance to play.
“I pride myself in helping everyone, not just one or two players that come my way,” Mac said.
Mac does not use one set system, she makes adjustments, especially when things are not working out well.
“I have always looked at it as how I can help from the sideline,” Mac said.
Mac’s experience playing and coaching has taught her what being a coach means. “Your job is to help at the level of who you have in front of you,” she said.
Mac has dedicated her life to teaching, coaching and mentoring, but coaching does not stop there. “I have learned a lot of things over the years and a lot I have brought back to my team,” she said.
In 2023, Mac was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame and awarded their prestigious Silver Metal for contributions to high school basketball.
“One of my favorite things about getting put into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame is that I went in at the same time as Katie Douglas,” Mac said. “I thought that was the coolest thing, that a player from where I went to high school was getting in, and my own teammate was put in a few years before that.”
The road here was not an
