Sources: WNBA’s Fever hire Stephanie White as new head coach

The Indiana Fever have hired Stephanie White as their new head coach, league sources told ESPN on Friday.

White, who spent the past two seasons as head coach of the Connecticut Sun, takes over a franchise led by WNBA star  Caitlin Clark.

Building around a promising young core in Clark and Aliyah Boston, the past two No. 1 draft picks, White will look to propel Indiana to the organization’s first championship since 2012.

White — an Indiana native and former star at Purdue — is plenty familiar with the Fever, serving on their coaching staff from 2011 to 2016, including as head coach for the last two years of that span. She was a member of the franchise’s inaugural roster in 2000 and played for the team for four seasons.

White went 55-25 with consecutive semifinals appearances with the Sun, winning WNBA Coach of the Year in 2023. Prior to her return to the WNBA, she coached at Vanderbilt for five seasons, and she has worked for years as a basketball analyst.

She replaces Christie Sides, who led the Fever to a 20-20 record last season and their first playoff berth since 2016. The organization announced it was moving on from Sides, who had just ended her second season at the helm, on Sunday. The Sun announced Monday that White was out after two seasons with the team.

“This has not been easy,” White told ESPN on her departure from Connecticut. “But certainly, at the end of the day, it’s tough for me being away from my family. So from a professional standpoint and a personal standpoint, I feel like it’s the best decision.”

White’s hiring isn’t the only major change in Indianapolis. Earlier this offseason, the Fever tabbed Kelly Krauskopf as their new president and Amber Cox as their new COO and GM.

The arrival of Clark — the 2024 rookie of the year and a first-team all-WNBA selection — sent the Fever into another stratosphere of relevance: The franchise led the league in attendance this season, averaging over 17,000 fans per contest, and regularly garnered a million-plus viewers for games.

Not including the league’s newest expansion team in Golden State, the WNBA is set to have seven new head coaches taking the helm for the 2025 season, which is a record according to the Elias Sports Bureau.