INDIANAPOLIS – When Stephanie White is asked whether she is nervous about her first season as Fever head coach, she smiles. Then she relates a story.

It was back in early March. White, who also does basketball analyst work for a number of television outlets, was covering games in her media role. She’d finish at an arena, head for home or to her hotel, and try to get some sleep.

“I had a few nights,” White remembered, “when all I would do was put my head on the pillow and I’d start thinking of end-of-game situations and end-of-game out-of-bounds plays. I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we haven’t even started (the WNBA season). Is this how it’s going to be all year long?’ ”

White moved on from those moments. And if they represented any sort of jitters for the 37-year-old, first-time head coach, it’s not likely they’ll return in any serious fashion.

With her first WNBA draft in the rear-view mirror, and the start of Indiana’s 2015 training camp looming in mid-May, White is prepared and eager for the challenge of taking over one of the most successful franchises in women’s professional basketball.

“I think once we get going, I’m sure there will be some sort of … I don’t know if it’s butterflies,” White said. “But it’s like when you’re a player and you’re in your environment. You’re in a comfort zone. This is my comfort zone.”

Indeed, that’s why Kelly Krauskopf, the Fever’s president and general manager, pinpointed White as a head coaching prospect years ago. Krauskopf knew White’s history, and played a part in much of it.

White, a former Miss Basketball in the Indiana high school ranks and a national collegiate Player of the Year at Purdue, played professionally for five seasons – including four with the Fever from 2000 to 2003. Krauskopf, with the Fever since its inception in 1999, acquired White as a player and then made sure she returned to the team as an assistant coach to Lin Dunn in 2011.

White was an assistant with the Chicago Sky at the time, and Krauskopf envisioned her as Dunn’s successor whenever the time came. And that time came at the end of last season.

“Stephanie is a winner,” Krauskopf said. “She has been a winner her whole life. Everything she does, she’s very prepared, she’s very thoughtful.”

And, though White had never been a head coach until now, she began preparing for that role when she was still a WNBA player and took an assistant coaching position at Ball State in the off-season. Assistant jobs at Kansas State and Toledo would follow before she moved on to the Sky.

White sensed her love, her passion for coaching the first time she stepped on the floor with the players at Ball State.

Now, to the Fever, she brings a philosophy and brand of basketball steeped in free-flowing offensive movement. She wants her team’s play-makers to get opportunities to show their skills. Krauskopf is hoping it translates into higher scores for the Indiana team, which relied heavily on defense with Dunn at the helm.

“We’ve won a lot of games off of defense and rebounding,” said Krauskopf, whose Indiana franchise has made 10 consecutive playoff appearances. But times are changing in the WNBA.

“I think the league is so good now, you can’t just win on defense,” Krauskopf noted. “You have to score points. That’s just the way it is. … Stephanie sees the game through an offensive lens.”

It will be a sea change from the years under the retired Dunn, a Hall of Fame coach who led the Fever to the 2012 WNBA championship. Krauskopf realizes as much. Veteran players who will return to play for White – standouts such as Tamika Catchings, Briann January and Shavonte Zellous – all will need to adjust.

But all of them, too, have exactly the kind of offensive skills that White plans to showcase.

“I think the one thing we all have to be realistic about is that it’s still a transition – a transition for the players, a transition for (White),” Krauskopf said. “She is going to want to run her system and do things the way she wants, and some of those things are going to take time. … There will be things she will learn along the way.

“But I can’t think of anybody in the league that I’m more comfortable with to make that transition.”

As White moves into her upper-echelon leadership role with the Fever, she also continues her quest for self-improvement in numerous aspects. This is a woman, after all, who had thoughts of becoming an astronaut before basketball took over her life. She takes nothing for granted.

On White’s office desk recently was a copy of the book, “An Impractical Guide to Becoming a Transformational Leader,” by Joshua Medcalf and Jamie Gilbert. The authors also wrote a book entitled: “Burn Your Goals: The Counter Cultural Approach to Achieving Your Greatest Potential.”

“These guys’ books are really good,” White said. “I actually talk to them frequently, too. I’m all about trying to be better myself.”

It’s one of White’s many qualities that her new bosses love.

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