Indiana Fever coaching hire is a full-circle moment — and a familial reunion

Austin Kelly and Karima Christmas-Kelly will both serve as assistant coaches under Stephanie White in Indiana next season.

The Indiana Fever organization is gearing up for the upcoming WNBA season with a brand-new head coach: former Fever standout Stephanie White, who is fresh off of a two-year tenure as head coach of the Connecticut Sun.

White has spoken glowingly about the opportunity to lead the Fever, an organization she previously played and coached for.

“It feels like the stars just perfectly aligned,” White said. “So, while at times there’s anxiety through transition, there just hasn’t been for me. It’s been very calming, it feels perfect. This franchise has been a part of my DNA from Day One, and will always be. When things are meant to be, it feels really good.”

Whether or not White would bring with her Sun assistant coach staff was an outstanding question. But, this week, the Fever announced two assistant coach hires. Austin Kelly, previously a key member of White’s staff in Connecticut, will join White in making the leap to Indiana.

There, Kelly will team up with his wife, Karima Christmas-Kelly, a returning assistant coach on the Fever.

Austin Kelly was an assistant under White for two years at Connecticut, helping run the Sun’s offense. Prior to that WNBA stant, he was an assistant coach and recruiting director at University of Texas-Arlington (from 2021 to 2023) and the director of recruiting at Vanderbilt (from 2019 to 2021).

Karima Christmas-Kelly, meanwhile, is a former WNBA player herself. She played in the league from 2011 to 2020 — with stints on the Washington Mystics, Tulsa Shock, Indiana Fever, and Minnesota Lynx — and then joined Christie Sides’ staff on the Fever in 2023 as an assistant coach. The former Duke standout’s primary focus was working with guards during her two-year tenure in Indiana Fever.

Christmas-Kelly and White are quite familiar with one another; the former was on the 2012 Fever championship-winning team, while the latter was an assistant coach on that squad.

The intriguing detail about the assistant coach news is that Austin Kelly and Karima Christmas-Kelly are married. They have a one-year-old, Zayn, who lives with Christmas-Kelly year round.

Last year, the couple was split up for the WNBA season, with Kelly rooted in Indiana and Christmas-Kelly in Connecticut. The two even faced off in the first round of the playoffs when the Fever took on the Sun.

Now, the couple will share the sidelines for the first time.

The Fever have yet to announce the fate of their other assistant coaches under Christie Sides, and it’s not yet known if White will bring with her any other assistants from Connecticut.

White’s lead assistant, Briann January, is highly regarded as one of the top assistant coaches in the league. Whether she’ll stay in Connecticut remains to be seen.