Tammi Reiss almost hated basketball and the sour taste it left in her mouth lingered for years. She couldn’t pick up a ball without remembering the pain.

The national championship she had craved escaped her. First by nine points, then by three in overtime, then by a single one as the clock on the game and her career simultaneously ran out.

Inside a Los Angeles hotel room, Reiss wept and refused to talk to anyone. Not even her parents, who left her alone.

Three trips to the final four. No titles.

She needed something else to fill the void after her relationship with basketball fractured.

“I just wanted to walk away from it,” Reiss said of the torturous end to her two-time All-American career at Virginia. “I didn’t want to coach, I didn’t want to talk about it. … I just needed a break.”

To occupy the time after graduating in 1992, Reiss took up acting throughout the next 20 years. She had barely any experience, save for a few lessons in college. She also bounced between owning a dance club, modeling and working at a Gold’s Gym. Wounds faded over time and she served as an assistant coach at UVA in the mid-90s to appease her parents. In 1997, Reiss got back to playing.

The first-year Syracuse assistant never fully settled on one career until 2011. She said she won’t get back into acting until her coaching career is over. Moving back and forth provided a stretch of time that stalled both tracks. She thinks she could’ve been a star actress or a head coach by now.

“It definitely slowed my career down, but that’s OK because it flourished me as a person in so many other aspects of my life,” Reiss said. “I wanted to have experiences. I didn’t want to be defined as one thing. That got boring for me.”

 

Courtesy of Syracuse Athletic Communications

 

Paul Tylawsky, Reiss’ sixth grade teacher and future personal trainer asked her in eighth grade to choose between basketball and track and field.

“I’m picking basketball,” Tylawsky recalls Reiss saying.

“For now.”

As a player at Virginia, Reiss enjoyed being interviewed so much, she started taking acting lessons as an undergrad. It was the first acting experience she ever gained and even with limited background, she chose to pursue it after finishing her successful collegiate basketball career.

“I was pretty shocked that she wanted to drop something that she loved for something that she’d never done,” Ed Reiss, Tammi’s father, said. “That’s a little hard to comprehend.”

Reiss went to acting school in New York City, got an agent and landed the first three parts she sought after, two national commercials and a modeling opportunity.

Reiss said she was only starting to get good. She joined a union and had enough gigs to comfortably support herself. Then Virginia offered her an assistant coaching job and her parents urged her to take it. Looking back, Reiss wishes she hadn’t.

“Going back to coaching, going back to acting, going back to coaching. You got to pay your dues, you got to get good, you got to practice your craft,” Reiss said. “… You’re either in or you’re not. It’s just like anything else.”

When she got back into acting after two seasons, the rejections were harder to take than the ones in basketball. She could control her play on the court. If she didn’t perform, she could improve parts of her game for the future. In acting, Reiss couldn’t control whether or not she was pretty enough or had the right skin color.

But she kept practicing ways to elicit emotions better. The enthusiasm Reiss now uses when working out alongside Syracuse players was being steered in a different direction.

Reiss has always been able to hold an audience, Beth Burns, the coach that hired Reiss at San Diego State said. During games, she’d wave to the crowd and yell toward coaches. She let her emotions rage for everyone to see.

After enough time passed, Reiss returned to playing in 1997, the WNBA’s inaugural season. She hadn’t played in five years, but trained with Tylawsky. With just six months of prep, Reiss was taken fifth overall by the Utah Starzz.

But Reiss only played for two seasons and served as an assistant coach for another two. In between playing and coaching, Reiss returned to acting to play Vicki Sanchez in Juwanna Mann, what she calls the highlight of her career. Co-stars Tommy Davidson and Kim Wayans replaced Basketball Hall of Famer Dawn Staley and current Clemson head coach Audra Smith, both who she played with at UVA. Watching production replaced watching opponents’ film. Performing for talent evaluators and cameras replaced teammates and fans.

“When the light turns on on that camera and you got to hit a scene or hit an emotion, you’ve got to be on,” Reiss said. “You got to perform. It’s a lot like sports.”

Though she had only one line, Reiss still gets associated with Juwanna Mann years later. At San Diego State, a player on the men’s basketball team stopped his workout to meet Reiss when she walked through the weight room, Burns said. Before facing Syracuse in December, players on Jacksonville’s team asked if Reiss was in the movie, SU forward Taylor Ford said.

Fast forward to 1:28 for Tammi Reiss’ appearance in the Juwanna Mann movie trailer.

 

In 2011, nearly 20 years after missing out on a championship, Reiss watched former Virginia teammate Tonya Cardoza coach No. 10 seed Temple against No. 2 seed Notre Dame in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Reiss hadn’t been to a game of that magnitude in years.

As she sat down alone in the Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, the bands, the crowd and the cameras all came rushing back. So too did the three losses, crying in the hotel room and the desire for a national championship.

Imitating emotions could only get Reiss so far. She needed to feel the real ones again.

“It just clicked,” Reiss said. “I said, ‘What am I doing? I miss this.’”

The next day, Reiss began searching for an assistant coaching position. She heard Burns, who recruited her out of high school, had an open spot at San Diego State.

Burns warned Reiss: Coaching was too hard, she wouldn’t make as much money and her time had passed. But Reiss said she really wanted to, and did.

“In 21 years of being a head coach, … She was the quickest 1-2 year improved assistant that I’ve ever had,” Burns said. “She wanted to learn and she wanted to get it right and she worked her tail off.”

Reiss now uses her past experience as a tool. Players respect her because she played professionally. They listen to her advice because she’s pursued so many different avenues. In recruiting, Reiss stresses how she’s seen it all.

She’s working just a few hours from where she grew up. Her parents often come to SU games, and she can travel home to see her 92-year-old grandmother. After stops in Salt Lake City, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego and Fullerton, she’s finally back to the conference where she had her most success.

Reiss says she still plans on having a “Betty White career” after she retires from coaching in her late 60s.

But one of the reasons she left Cal State Fullerton for SU this past summer is to compete for championships. The Orange sits in fourth place in the ACC, in line for a double bye in the ACC tournament. Three postseason wins and Reiss could accomplish what she did twice as a player at Virginia.

The win that’s eluded Reiss though is a national title. It’s one of the only incomplete tasks on her dwindling list of goals.

The thing Reiss never accomplished as a player is what drove her out of basketball. But it’s also what brought her back.

“That’s why I coach the game now,” Reiss said. “I want a shot at championships again. I want that feeling again. I know the pain because I’ve already experienced it. But I want to experience the joy.”

Published on February 15, 2016 at 10:44 pm

Contact Paul: pmschwed@syr.edu | @pschweds