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Leistikow: Meet Abby Stamp, a quietly impactful force for Iowa women’s basketball

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Leistikow: Meet Abby Stamp, a quietly impactful force for Iowa women’s basketball

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IOWA CITY − In the north-side Iowa City household of Quinn and Abby Stamp, figuring things out on the fly has become essential to the daily game plan. Especially over the past two years, as the couple has balanced two young kids while Abby has been in the thick of the exploding spotlight of Iowa women’s basketball as one of the program’s three assistant coaches.

At the recent Final Four in Cleveland, as Iowa was approaching its late-night semifinal matchup versus UConn, husband Quinn was stuck at the team hotel with their daughter Mavis, then age 4, and son Wyn, 17 months. Young Wyn had sprung an ear infection and anybody who could normally help was already at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. Quinn’s improvised remedy? An Uber Eats delivery order for Children’s Motrin to relieve their crying son … while Abby coached in arguably the most important game in school history.

A former point guard at Iowa when she was Abby Emmert, Stamp understands how to create something out of nothing. That was true two Tuesday mornings later, April 16 in Iowa City. Stamp was running point while hosting Lucy Olsen, the prized Villanova transfer, for a recruiting visit. The night before had been a big one for Iowa women’s basketball in New York, where Caitlin Clark was selected No. 1 overall in the WNBA Draft with the other three full-time coaches – Lisa Bluder, Jan Jensen and Raina Harmon – in attendance at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

Stamp picked up Olsen and her parents, but their intended breakfast spot was surprisingly closed. Then during their meal at new spot Bread Garden, Stamp got a message that their next visit with UI president Barbara Wilson had been delayed until later in the day.

“We were off to a terrible start,” Stamp laughs, “but we were having fun with it.”

While traveling back on about one hour of sleep from New York, Bluder and Jensen hastily set up a detour to the office of head football coach Kirk Ferentz, who like Olsen is a Pennsylvania native. So Stamp rolled up to the entrance of the Hawkeye football building and put on her car’s hazard lights, thinking they’d be inside only for a few minutes.

“We were there for like an hour-and-a-half,” Stamp says. “The whole time, I’m thinking my car’s going to be towed. Then what are we going to do?”

As it turned out, Stamp’s car survived the lengthy office visit. And the personal connections stuck. A day later, Olsen – the nation’s third-leading scorer behind Clark and USC’s JuJu Watkins – gave her commitment to play for the Hawkeyes as a senior in 2024-25.

Those are a few of the chaotic windows into the work-life balance for the Stamp family, which on Memorial Day celebrated Mavis’ fifth birthday. Four days earlier, on May 23, she and Quinn celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary. Even with Bluder’s abrupt retirement and Jensen’s elevation to head coach, this time of year has annually become a needed reset for the Stamps.

“We cram a lot into May,” Quinn quips.

And in about a week, players report for the summer program to officially kick off another new year of Hawkeye women’s basketball. The cycle of chaos is about to begin again.

Scouting film as a second-grader (sort of)

Of Iowa’s three assistant coaches over the past two unfathomable seasons, which featured back-to-back NCAA title-game appearances, Stamp has received by far the least attention. Jensen was a close second to Bluder in media interviews, in part due to her renowned history for post-player development (most prominently with 2019 national player of the year Megan Gustafson and then Monika Czinano and Hannah Stuelke) and because of her candid insight and outgoing presence.

Harmon, going into her eighth year on staff, has a robust social-media presence and most recently received a lot of praise for her game plan that helped Iowa take down defending national champ LSU in the Elite Eight. Stamp has always preferred to live behind the scenes and is known as a grinder in the profession. She was reluctant to participate in this story, because attention isn’t something she naturally seeks.

But in Jensen’s introductory press conference as Bluder’s successor in mid-May and in a subsequent interview with the Register, she identified Stamp as the closest thing to the “next” Jan Jensen, describing her as an “old soul” who works relentlessly and possesses an exceptional basketball mind. Not to mention, like Jensen, she’s a lifelong Iowan. This coming season will be Stamp’s 20th in the last 21 at Iowa as either a player, staff member or coach.

“Since Abby played for us, that would make sense,” Jensen says. “She’s seen me in every role, too. I recruited the heck out of her. When she committed, I was in my driveway, on the phone with her. You don’t always remember every kid that commits. But the special ones, you do.”

Stamp grew up in Winterset (population 5,455). Her mother, Nancy, operated a hair salon out of the back of their home. Her father, Gary Emmert, was the longtime head boys basketball coach at Winterset High School. That was where Stamp, a self-described tomboy, mostly gravitated during her youth. As a second-grader, she would look over Dad’s shoulder as he dissected hours of video tape. After games, while her father was calling in the box score to the local newspaper, Abby would be shooting in the gym until the gradually dimming lights went dark.

“I thought the Winterset Huskies were the greatest thing in the world,” she says. “I grew up that way.”

As an Iowa player, from 2004 to 2008, she experienced a little bit of everything. In part because of injuries, Stamp found herself starting at point guard as a true freshman. The Hawkeyes won their first 13 games that season but unraveled and failed to make the NCAA Tournament.

Iowa made the WNIT in Stamp’s sophomore season. Her junior year was her “hardest year” and one that shaped her appreciation of how coaches navigate adversity. On the ride from the Cedar Rapids airport to Iowa City after Iowa’s season-ending loss in the Big Ten Tournament, Bluder walked to the back of the bus and delivered what Stamp says was a “really raw” speech.

Stamp recalls thinking, “That’s a leader I want to do everything I can for. … We have to do this for her. We have to turn this around.”

The following March, with Stamp as a senior co-captain, Iowa won at Wisconsin to clinch a share of the 2008 Big Ten regular-season title. That bus ride home understandably had a more fulfilling and relieving feel.

Stamp’s Iowa playing career didn’t leap off the stat sheet – 299 points, 177 assists, 144 rebounds and 45 steals – but she endeared herself to Bluder (and Jensen), who loved her approach as a coach’s kid and hoped to bring her back on staff someday.

After college, jobs were hard to come by for Stamp amid the nation’s financial crisis and subsequent “Great Recession.” Her early post-college days began by opening the North Dodge Athletic Club at 5 a.m., then working as a bartender at night.

“I know, it’s kind of crazy,” she jokes. “I wasn’t like slinging (drinks). I was actually terrible.”

She eventually become a fund-raiser for the United Way, a job she liked a lot. But the coaching call came in the summer of 2009, when Bluder asked her to replace Chuck Evans as Iowa’s director of women’s basketball operations.

Learning the ropes from veteran coaches

Bluder allowed Stamp to do a little of everything in her new role. She immediately got immersed in scheduling, with early guidance from then-assistant Jenni Fitzgerald, and was so good at it that she still handles that lead role today.

Fitzgerald’s legendary scouting was also imparted on Stamp, along with what has now become one of Stamp’s many masterful behind-the-scenes strengths: late-game and out-of-bounds play designs.

The four-quarter system in women’s basketball rewards teams that can maximize expiring-clock situations, and Iowa has been elite in that category for years − especially during the Clark era.

During those behind-the-scenes “DOBO” days (director of basketball operations), Stamp understood the high value of good play design in close games. An example that sprung to mind: a Jan. 26, 2015, home game vs. Nebraska, with Iowa down one point with a few seconds to go. The play she designed (in collaboration with Bluder, she points out – never wanting too much credit) got a free-throw chance for Whitney Jennings, who made one of two to force overtime, where the Hawkeyes would snap an eight-game losing streak to the Cornhuskers.

For those who remember the end of the first half of Iowa’s 2023 Final Four upset of South Carolina, it was the same design that got Gabbie Marshall a wide-open look for 3 (which rattled in and out) when Iowa had to go 94 feet in 4.1 seconds against full-court pressure: A half-court pass to Monika Czinano, who flung a quick pass to a sprinting Clark, who drew defenders and kicked to a spotted-up Marshall for a left-wing 3.

Iowa’s pristine execution has been a Bluder-era staple, and Stamp is a big reason for that. She organizes all the late-game plays and recommends them to the head coach, who of course has the final say.

“Any of those last-second plays (from) out of bounds, on the sideline, you’ll see me with a special little book, and I’ll go through it,” Stamp says. “That’s obviously a ton of trust.

“Really, everything we do out there we’ve practiced multiple times. (Bluder)’s not really into drawing things up last minute. We’ve done them, the team knows them, we’ve talked about them.”

Amazing highs and parenting reality

After 10 years on staff – eight as “DOBO” and two as director of player personnel – Stamp was elevated to assistant coach after the Elite Eight season of 2019, when Fitzgerald stepped away from full-time coaching. She was eight months pregnant with Mavis when she got the news and told her husband on a walk later that evening.

Quinn’s reaction: shock at first due to the timing and then full support. The new role would mean more travel and even longer hours, but they were in it together. Of course, they never could have imagined what was to come, including a second child (Wyn) being born on Nov. 1, 2022 – at the beginning of Iowa’s first Final Four season.

Quinn was an accomplished small-town athlete himself, an all-state football player and baseball pitcher in the late 1990s at Lisbon High School. His late father, Gary, was a renowned coach there.

“He has been the one the whole way who has been, ‘You’ve got this. We’ve got this,’” Abby says. “I’m thankful to have that, because I need that.

“But yeah, in some ways, it’s been incredible to see this all happen and the growth of (Iowa women’s basketball) over the last five years. At the same time, it’s so interesting to have it happen while I’m in this stage of life. It’s probably been a good thing, quite honestly, that … I just haven’t felt a whole lot of that (pressure), because I haven’t had the time. You just kind of go from one thing to the next.”

From two young kids to the Final Four in Dallas to raucous celebrations on the Pentacrest to the team’s two-week foreign trip in Italy and Croatia to 55,646 fans at the Crossover in Kinnick to rock-star-like experiences in sold-out arenas wherever they went to a third straight Big Ten Tournament championship to another Final Four in Cleveland … what a breathless 18-month whirlwind this became for everyone.

Even though Quinn has his own full-time job, as a construction manager for UI facilities management, he often takes on the role of solo dad with Abby, 38, traveling so much. But she, too, races around the clock. The couple tells the story of Abby returning from a road win at Minnesota at 3 a.m., only to find Quinn up with Mavis, who couldn’t sleep. At that point, it was Abby’s turn to take over and give her husband some needed relief.

Of course, we all remember the famous Clark 3-pointer to beat second-ranked Indiana at the buzzer of the final game of the 2022-23 regular season. While others may have gone out to celebrate, Stamp’s postgame excitement was a stop at Hy-Vee after getting a message that they were out of diapers and detergent.

“You really come back to reality quickly,” she laughs.

In a recent six-month stretch, Mavis got six strep-throat infections and had to have her tonsils removed.

“And I was pretty much gone for all of them,” she says.

Wherever she was, she regularly got text-message photos from waiting rooms.

“That’s the thing,” Quinn says. “It seemed like every time she would leave, one of the kids would have an ear infection or get a sore throat.”

Back to the coaching again, Stamp predictably downplays her immense role in creating another blockbuster non-conference 2024-25 schedule, which once all documents are signed is expected to include six-figure guarantees for Iowa to play games in Charlotte against Virginia Tech ($150,000), in Sioux Falls against Kansas ($100,000), and in Brooklyn against Tennessee ($100,000). Those figures were previously unheard of in women’s basketball.

Off-the-court with family, Caitlin Clark

Another one of Stamp’s integral roles is being Iowa’s point-guard coach. Yes, that meant managing Clark from freshman to senior year. That also meant subbing out Clark from games on occasion, and that did not always go over well with the competitive two-time national player of the year.

But overall, Stamp is most proud about how she helped Clark grow as a teammate, on and off the court.

“That was always our yin and yang. We worked through that together,” Stamp says. “I’m a super-positive, super-uplifting … sort of person. She’s a truth-teller. She would drive me a little more in that way to see things a little more differently from her perspective. (And) she had a good understanding of my love for her (to) not just be Caitlin Clark the basketball player.

“That’s kind of the thing that I think is really cool. She’s got lifelong friends (teammates) that are going to be there for her, no matter what. That’s what I’m most thankful for. Because she has so much ahead of her, obviously. … There’s going to be people out to get her.”

And now, a new chapter. The post-Clark era. The era of Olsen, who she’ll directly coach. There are unknowns going forward in the Jensen head-coaching era. How much more prominence Stamp will have on staff remains to be seen.

At the end of our interview, the kids head outside to play on the family’s swing set. Five wild years as an assistant coach and mom are in the books.

So many memories. So much confetti. So much life chaos … in the past and inevitably to come.

“These five years,” she says, “my family has been the most special part of it all.”

Hawkeyes columnist Chad Leistikow has served for 29 years with The Des Moines Register and USA TODAY Sports Network. Chad is the 2023 INA Iowa Sports Columnist of the Year and NSMA Co-Sportswriter of the Year in Iowa. Join Chad’s text-message group (free for subscribers) at HawkCentral.com/HawkeyesTexts. Follow @ChadLeistikow on Twitter.

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