Basketball: Hawks sign Kirstin Daly-Taylor as head coach

New Hawke's Bay Hawks head coach Kirstin Daly-Taylor. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

The Hawke's Bay Hawks have made a significant coaching hire - on multiple levels.

The franchise today announced the appointment of Kirstin Daly-Taylor as head coach on a five year deal - a hire which states the franchise's ambitions while also making waves outside of the basketball realm.

A former Tall Fern, Daly-Taylor becomes one of the rare women to take control of a men's team at a domestic level.

In 2001, she turned down the opportunity to be the head coach of the Wellington Saints, and with it the opportunity to be the first woman in Australasia to coach a men's national league team.

She was quoted in saying this at the time in the Herald:

"I definitely thought about it and it is something I want to do eventually," she said.

"The whole excitement of being the first woman and the attention that would get is not why I would want to do it.

"The reason I want to coach is because I love the game. I'd want to do it because I was the best person for the job and not because I'd look good in a short skirt on the sideline on television."

She got her shot with the Hawks in 2003, only to not be able to continue due to pregnancy, with Shawn Dennis taking over for a successful six-year reign.

Although Daly-Taylor seemingly would want the appointment to focus on her coaching skills (which are notable), it would be doing the hire a disservice not to at least mention the gender boundaries which the hiring breaks down in the 2015 landscape.

If you look around the men's domestic leagues - the ITM Cup, domestic cricket and the ASB Premiership for starters - it is nigh on impossible to find a female coach, and it has been that way for decades.

By giving Daly-Taylor a five-year deal as an NBL head coach, the Hawks not only get the right person for the job who brings an array of skills to the table, they also have made a statement which will bring hope to all aspiring female coaches - if you're good enough, you've got the job.

And Daly-Taylor is good enough. As well as her stint in 2003, she was an assistant coach at the Hawks for several seasons, and stepped in as interim head coach when Paul Henare's Breakers duties clashed with his Hawks coaching duties in 2011.

She has plans for the franchise, and clearly the Hawks' philosophies are in line with hers - signing her to a five-year deal which is almost unheard of in NBL circles.

Daly-Taylor told the Hawke's Bay Today she pushed for the five-year deal rather than a six-month contract in order to create something sustainable for a franchise which was suffering from financial concerns in the offseason.

"We're not bringing a championship home and then getting financially screwed and out of it the next year," Daly-Taylor said, while also noting that her main goal is still to win titles - aiming to make the top four every season.

"My philosophy is that it's about creating a programme players want to come to, especially Hawke's Bay kids, and to create an environment where players feel valued and take ownership. It'll be like a family", she told the Hawke's Bay Today.

"For me, the coaching is about having loyalty and passion for the Hawks. It's very much because I still live here.

"I'm not doing this job in the hope of getting the next job in the United States or Philippines or somewhere else.

"I'm doing it because I want to be here, my life is here, my home is here and it makes perfect sense."

The Hawks had only five expressions of interest for the gig, one being last season's interim player/coach Paora Winitana - who dropped out when content with the path the Hawks were taking.

Daly-Taylor is looking to finalise a squad of 14 by February 15 - and that squad reportedly won't include promising Hastings guard Mataeus Marsh, who is said to be moving up to play for the Supercity Rangers.