Natisha Hiedeman brings big personality to Lady Lions, WNBA | Penn State Sports News

Natisha Hiedeman has experienced basketball in many environments throughout her life, including at Marquette, on the Connecticut Sun and the Minnesota Lynx.

However, Hiedeman’s greatest moments have come from her time coaching in Happy Valley due to her long-lasting relationship with coach Carolyn Kieger.

“My home is going to be wherever Coach Kiegs is at,” Hiedeman said. “She gave me my first opportunity to be a coach, and she coached me.”

Before Kieger, Hiedeman played basketball at Green Bay Southwest High School, where she also was a four-time school record holder in track and field. Despite her track and field success, Hiedeman committed to play basketball at Marquette, where she spent the next four years under Kieger’s tutelage en route to becoming a Golden Eagles legend.

“She played for me, obviously, for four years at Marquette, so you know that her and I are very close. We always have been,” Kieger said. “I really trust her work ethic, I trust her communication skills and what she has to inspire … She’s always been someone who just ignites a room.”

Four years later, Hiedeman emerged from Marquette ranked third in points, seventh in assists and fourth in steals in school history.

“We enjoyed watching T as a collegiate player and believed she had a future as a pro because she played the game with great energy and passion and exuded a toughness that defines good players,” Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve said.

With praise in college from WNBA coaches, Hiedeman declared for the 2019 WNBA Draft, where she was selected 18th overall by the Sun – a team she spent five years on, eventually becoming a starter.

Through her first four seasons in Connecticut, Hiedeman saw continued improvement until her breakout in Year 4, where she averaged a career-high 9.1 points in 31 starts.

Following her fourth season with the Sun, Hiedeman was reunited with Kieger at Penn State, where she was brought on as the director of player development.

“I feel like I always wanted to be a coach, like even when I was younger, growing up, I was always trying to make up plays and draw plays,” Hiedeman said. “So when (Kieger) gave me the opportunity to come coach with her — me and her have a really good relationship — I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to experience.”

With the Lady Lions, the former Marquette star helped run drills like she was used to in her college and professional experience, but also saw a different side of coaching she took for granted as a player.

“As a coach, you’re doing a lot more stuff I never even knew coaches were doing, like watching film, scouting, planning practices, being in the office,” Hiedeman said. “And then you have 15 players and you’re taking care of all of them too at the same time.”

For Hiedeman, taking care of those 15 players was one of the most memorable parts of her coaching experience.

“I really value relationships,” Hiedeman said. “Just to be able to create the relationships I’ve created is really important to me. I don’t want to just coach you because I’m there at this time. I built those relationships to keep forever.”

While serving as the director of player development, Hiedeman didn’t just spend time with the Lady Lions but was still an active WNBA player coming off her best season yet.

“Thankfully, (Kieger) let me practice with the team, so I was practicing with the team a lot. And then, aside from that, she was also taking the time to work me out as well, either after practices, during practices or before practices,” Hiedeman said. “And honestly, pretty much the whole staff respected that I was still an athlete, so they’re all taking a lot of time out of their day as well to help me, whether that was putting me through drills, rebounding or whatever.”

Just weeks before joining the Penn State staff, Hiedeman helped lead the Sun to their fourth WNBA Championship appearance. While the team ultimately fell short, Hiedeman had her best season as a pro, averaging 9.1 points, 3.3 assists and 1.2 steals per game, which were all career highs.

“Everybody loves Natisha, everybody has great relationships with Natisha,” Kieger said. “She is a people-oriented person, and she just loves genuine relationships, and that’s something that’s infectious and you want to be around, so I knew that was going to be really important for us.”

In Hiedeman’s first season in Happy Valley, the blue and white went 14-17 — its best record in five years.

After spending her offseason with Penn State, Hiedeman returned to Connecticut, where she started in all 40 games for the first time in her career.

“It’s challenging at times, just the wave of emotions that you can feel from playing basketball,” Hiedeman said. “Me being a current player, I feel like I was still feeling a lot of those things.”

In 2023, Hiedeman returned to Happy Valley, this time as an assistant coach, continuing to help Lady Lions basketball while growing herself as a professional.

“A lot of energy was poured into me, a lot of support,” Hiedeman said. “I think the excitement of just having me around really made the game fun for me. Basketball is my job now, so being able to kind of take a step back from playing and help others in a different way, I think, definitely just helped my career.”

In her second and final season with the blue and white, Hiedeman took what she learned from her first year coaching to become much more of a mentor for the Lady Lions, both the young freshmen and older veterans.

“Coming from a guard standpoint, being able to pick her brain a lot throughout the season, whether it be during games or practices, translates from what she’s saying to us and having it translate onto the court,” former Lady Lion Ashley Owusu, the 33rd pick in the 2024 WNBA draft, said. “Just being able to talk to her, to lean on her and just be able to hit her brain and ask her questions was very important.”

Even though she was just another member of the coaching staff, Hiedeman stood out above many others as a helping hand who was always there for the team.

“I know she reaches out to (guards) Moriah Murray and Jayla Oden to give them positive encouragement or tell them great job,” Kieger said. “Our student-athletes absolutely look up to her and get inspired by her. They absolutely love her and the feedback that she provides them.”

Down the stretch of the 2023-24 season, Hiedeman saw professional potential in graduate guards Owusu and Makenna Marisa and began coaching them in a professional setting both on the court and in a WNBA career perspective.

“Just being able to talk to me about the process from the time you get drafted to the time you get to training camp. I spoke to her a lot about not just the WNBA itself, but also just basketball,” Owusu said. “She talked to me about the process of ‘you get drafted, and then you have to buy into training camp, the whole offseason, the whole preseason.’”

Following Penn State’s best season since 2013-14, Hiedeman was traded to the Minnesota Lynx.

With two seasons of coaching under her belt, Hiedeman started seeing the court differently with the Lynx.

“Anytime a player gets to see the game through a coach’s lens, it helps them view the game more clearly as a player,” Reeve said. “(Natisha’s) coaching opportunity was really valuable to her growth as a player.”

While her season with the Lynx wasn’t her best statistically, Hiedeman used that coach’s lens to bring the team within five points of a WNBA title, falling short to the New York Liberty in five games.

“We have loved (Natisha) as a Lynx, as she adds such great energy with her consistent positive demeanor and her passion for competing with and for her Lynx teammates,” Reeve said.

Just six years into the WNBA, Hiedeman will likely have several more years of professional play, both in the WNBA and overseas during the offseason. No matter where she plays, her time as a coach has provided her with insights she never would’ve gotten otherwise.

“I would say coaching helped me slow down the game, see and think from a different perspective, a different view,” Hiedeman said. “So I would say that was probably the biggest takeaway, just really slowing down the game and understanding if this is happening, this happens, or if this happens, you need to do this.”

Even though Hiedeman only spent two years in Happy Valley compared to many years in the WNBA and at Marquette, Penn State will always remain one of her closest connections.

“I’m still crazy connected to Penn State,” Hiedeman said. “I’m definitely in contact with everyone and I gotta check up on my girls, make sure they’re doing good in a good headspace, doing everything they need to be doing.”

MORE BASKETBALL CONTENT