WBB Debrief: Meet new Head Coach AD Donovan - The Mac Weekly

*AD Donovan was named women’s basketball Head Coach in the summer of 2025. Prior to Mac, she worked as head coach at D-II University of Alaska Fairbanks and as an assistant coach at D-I Weber State. As a student athlete, she played for the University of Pennsylvania. Before the end of her inaugural season with Macalester, she sat down with *The Mac Weekly *to discuss her career and the future of women’s basketball at Macalester. *

Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to take your basketball career into coaching?

I think my junior year of high school — which was a while ago, now that I think about it — I had a teammate, [Ashley Corral], who was a first-year when I was a junior, who wound up being a McDonald’s All-American, went to USC [and] had a couple of two-week contracts in the WNBA. So being in a position as an upper class athlete, having two years of experience, and being able to mentor her and talk hoops with her and coach her up a little bit, I think was probably the big realization. … Seeing someone who was more talented than I was, and not finding it threatening, and being like, “Wow, this is so fun. It’s so cool to talk to her and help her to get to a level that maybe I’m not able to get to.”

*Earlier in your career, you relaunched the women’s basketball program at Shoreline Community College. What was that experience like and what did you learn from it for your coaching today? *

It was a really big lesson in resilience, because it was at a time when I was really grinding to try to stay in collegiate coaching and the opportunity came up kind of late. I would say the administration at that college didn’t give me the full lay of the land until after I’d said I would be their coach. And then they said: “Well, we’ll bring you in for your team meeting.” And we walked in, and there’s one person in the room. It was September. They wanted to [play] the season, so we held walk-on tryouts initially, and then we wound up with five players, so we played two games. But, we couldn’t do it with five people, it’s not possible.

So then I got to refocus and my job that year became recruiting the team, going out and finding players and finding the right fit. And I think going from a D-I assistant job to a junior college job, it helped me to reframe my recruiting skills. … If I didn’t do it, there wouldn’t be a team and there wouldn’t be a program. So it was hard and rewarding … [but] it was great to leave and say, “Okay, I put them in a position to have success.”

Before you came to Macalester, you were at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Why did you take that coaching position? And what did you gain working there?

I was feeling ready to run a program over the course of several cycles of recruiting and try to build it up, which was different from having been a high school coach or having been at Shoreline Community College. And anytime you have your first real run at things, there’s so much that you don’t know. So when I think back about that experience, I feel really proud that every year we improved on our win totals, because it’s probably not hard to imagine that recruiting athletes to Fairbanks, Alaska is not an easy job.

Over my time in Alaska, I felt like I got so much better at identifying some of the soft skills that would make people successful in a place like Fairbanks, Alaska: if they were adventurous, if they saw challenges as exciting instead of scary. On the first call [with a potential recruit], I used to say, “What’s the coldest temperature you’ve ever felt?” And they’d give me an answer, and I’d be like, “Okay, subtract 60 degrees from that. That’s going to happen up here. If that’s going to ruin your day, this is not the place for you.” So finding people who could go, “Oh, okay, yeah, you’re right, I don’t let the weather ruin my day. And I think it’s an adventure, not scary.” Those [moments] were big.

You’re recruiting for Macalester, and this season hasn’t seen your strongest record. How are you pitching Macalester to recruits?

It’s useful to be able to pitch the idea that we need people who can contribute right away. I think athletes are always excited to hear that. This is different from [a program where first-years are] playing behind the sophomores, juniors, seniors… I’m not promising playing time, not promising anything, but being able to say there’s a real opportunity [for new players].

And then the other thing with Macalester-caliber student athletes is that I don’t think they’re afraid of the work. So to say, “There’s work to be done in order for us to climb up to ultimately get to the playoffs, which is where we want to be — and we have a plan.”

That’s another thing I think that Macalester students want to hear. They want to hear there is a plan, and we know how we are going to do it. And a lot of them say, “How do you see me fitting into it?”

[My strategy is] articulating to them what the vision is, what the step-by-step process is and saying, “You know, it’s going to take some sweat and it’s going to take some hard work, and we’re ready for it as your coaches and as your community.” … I think our class that’s coming in would help us right now. They would push the needle.

What’s the plan you’re telling those players, and where do you see the team in the next year, three years, and longer term?

We’re really focused on sustainable growth over the next three, five and 10 years. I think that’s been reflected in our growth over the course of this first season — we’re a different team than we were in November. … One major goal is to enhance our recruiting efforts by identifying and attracting talent that fits not only our basketball philosophy — increas[ing] speed, size and skill — but also our academic standards. By investing in player development, we expect significant improvements in our performance on the court within the next three years.

Looking ahead to five years, we plan to solidify our position within our conference by consistently competing for playoff spots and championships. After that it’s expanding beyond our conference with the plan being to make the NCAA playoffs.

When you’re in the locker room with your team, what are the things you’re saying to them after a win, and what are the things you’re saying to them after a loss?

I am a little unique in the sense that I don’t do a long post-game talk. I was chatting with [Lynn Roberts, head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks] once, and she said “I don’t go into the locker room post-game.” And I was like, “What? That’s crazy.” And she said, “Everybody’s emotional. Some players are upset that they didn’t play enough. Some players are feeling great because they had a great game. Some players are upset with themselves because they missed a shot. Some players are thinking about where the parents are taking them to dinner. Some players are thinking about homework.” And she said that she likes to take the time to watch the film before she gives any sort of real basketball messaging, to make sure that she gets it right. And so for me, we meet at center court, and I usually keep it pretty brief.

One of the things I have said to the team a lot is “You’re never as good as you thought you were after a win, or as bad as you thought you were after a loss.” … One thing that’s stood out to me this year is that [the team] keeps seeking solutions. They haven’t quit for a second, even though that probably would have been easier at this point in the year, but belief has been my number one thing.

You wrote, after accepting the position at Macalester that “It’s refreshing to be part of a community that embraces inclusion.” Can you speak more about that? What about Macalester’s campus culture is so important to you?

It’s been really refreshing to be in a place where the top leadership — think [President Suzanne] Rivera, Dr. Katherine [Kay Coquemont] with Student Affairs, [Athletics Director] Donnie [Brooks] — all encourage people to be themselves authentically. Thinking about my time in Alaska, and then before that, when I was in Utah at Weber State University, it felt like every six months from the colleges I worked for, there was a message about, “Hey, we need to make ourselves smaller.”

And I do understand the realities of being a very federally funded organization and the challenges that the current administration has created. But from January of 2025 until I left, literally every week in Alaska, we got an email from our Chancellor that was, “Take your pronouns out of your emails. Do not make any comments about the political situation.”

There were Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Alaska, where indigenous people were being kidnapped, in January and February of 2025, and we had employees who were being chastised for posting about it. In those situations, sometimes you don’t realize how much of a toll that sort of shrinking has on you, and on the people around you.

In Alaska, we had a pride game — nothing like the scale of the Macalester women’s basketball’s pride game — but we were dealing with people posting slurs on our team Facebook, and the university refusing to take them down. … It felt like seeing the light again, getting out of that environment to be able to say, “Oh, I can speak about things that matter to me and my personal life.”

… Now it’s February 2026, and being in Minneapolis and the Twin Cities over the last several months, with what’s been going on, our team’s been engaged. We’ve been delivering groceries. And [at first I was] checking with admin, “Hey, so we’re doing this, and we’re partnering with this school who’s doing this food drive” and our administrators are like, “That’s great.”

Our team asked if we could get shootaround shirts that say “ICE Out of Minnesota.” They’ve been wearing those. And I again went and checked, and they’re like, “Of course you can do that.”

It’s kind of amazing what you can do when you’re not feeling a sense of dread at all times.