Jamie Carey, who coached Legacy to the Class 5A girls basketball title game last week, has been named assistant director of the U.S. women’s national team.
As a result, Carey will move from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs and give up her Lightning coaching job.
“One of the first things I asked was if I could keep coaching my kids,” said Carey, 29. “But because of the distance, if it wasn’t so far, I would. But it’s not really feasible.”
Carey will assist national team director Carol Callan, formerly a highly successful coach at Fairview in Boulder, and said she will be involved “with a little bit of everything, from working with the selection committee to inviting kids to trials, running the trials, going to different events.”
Carey, a former Horizon, Stanford and Texas star and the Ms. Colorado Basketball by The Denver Post in 1999, played for the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun and was a two-time member of the national team.
She informed Lightning players, who shared in a two-year run of 45-8, of her decision Monday. Her new position begins March 24.
“Those kids made me a better person,” Carey said. “I enjoyed being around them. The basketball part was nice, but the relationships were great.”
Neil H. Devlin: 303-954-1714 or ndevlin@denverpost.com
