John's Journal: The Legendary Carlie Wagner Is Back In The Game

Carlie Wagner was back at the girls state basketball tournament on Wednesday and she walked around with the biggest smile in town. Anybody who saw her play at state a decade ago remembers the small-town superstar from New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva for her smile as well as her tremendous basketball skills.

Carlie led NRHEG to a third-place finish at state in Class A as a sophomore, and the team won state titles the next two years. She was named Miss Basketball as a senior in 2014 and she ranks second all-time in career scoring in Minnesota girls high school basketball. She also was a state champion high jumper and a talented volleyball player.

On the basketball court she scored, she racked up assists and rebounds, she smiled seemingly all the time and she was the face of the game in Minnesota. During a tremendous basketball career at the University of Minnesota, she was an all-Big Ten player and finished her Gophers career in 2018 as the third-leading scorer in program history.

She’s been back to the campus many times since her playing career ended. She was at Williams Arena earlier this season when alumni players were honored at a Gophers women’s game. But Wednesday was her first appearance as a coach.

Wagner is in her first year as a volunteer assistant coach at Stewartville. She works as a thoracic surgery nurse at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and Stewartville is a short drive away.

“It's been a blast,” she said after the Tigers defeated St. Peter 47-46 in the Class 3A quarterfinals at Maturi Pavilion. “I honestly love it more than I thought I was going to. I always wanted to get into coaching but never thought it was the right time or I was ready. I got to know some great people from Stewartville that talked me into it, and it's been good.”

The first time I interviewed Carlie for a profile came early in her junior season. That story, in November 2012, included this…

She’s thinking of a career path that involves some form of medicine mixed with sports.

“I want to stick around sports,” she said, smiling. “Who wants to miss all this fun?”

She studied marketing and communications at the U of M. After a tryout with the WNBA’s Lynx she played professionally in Spain. But her goal of working in a medical field was still there. She has an associate’s degree in nursing and will complete a bachelor's degree this year.

“I always wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “I just couldn't do it with basketball and balancing everything. My mom just came across my kindergarten time capsule, and it said when I grow up I want to be a nurse. Weird how things work out, right?”

She’s a volunteer coach at Stewartville, where the players at first didn’t know too many details about their young coach’s background in the game. But it didn’t take long for them to start asking questions.

“At first I don't honestly think they knew,” she said, standing in a hallway a few steps from the Gophers women’s basketball locker room. “And then one of them came up to me one day and was like, ‘Why didn't you tell me? You did this and this and this.’ It's the same at work. People come up to me like, ‘Why didn't you tell us you played for the Gophers and that you did this and that?’ I was like, ‘I don't know. I'm just Carly.’ ”

First-year Stewartville head coach Tanner Teige said that after he got the job, he was putting out feelers for who could potentially join the staff.

“I heard that she was in the Rochester area, and I knew her background because she's just a couple years older than me,” he said.

“I reached out to her to see if she was interested. She was like, ‘I just got a new job at Mayo,’ so it was a little bit of a different dynamic at that point. And then she reached back out a little bit before the season and she was like, ‘Hey, I can't commit to full-time but I would love to be able to come be a part of it.’

“The girls love having her around. And obviously not too many schools in the state have a Division I basketball player hanging around in their gym. She makes a huge difference.”

Life can be hectic, that’s for sure. Carlie said there have been times during the season when she was either at work, at basketball or sleeping.

In fact, she came to Wednesday’s game having not slept the night before. She worked at the clinic from 7 p.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday, went home, took a shower and drove to Minneapolis for the Tigers’ noon tipoff.

After Wednesday’s game, she was heading home to Rochester to catch up on sleep before returning for Thursday’s noon state semifinal against Benilde-St. Margaret’s at Williams Arena.

If you see her back on her familiar turf, she’ll be the young coach wearing the biggest smile in town.

“I love being around it,” she said of coaching. “It's just a good environment. It's such a family environment. And, you know, it just brings me back to the game again.”

--Click here to read the November 2012 story about Carlie Wagner: https://old.mshsl.org/mshsl/johnsjournal.asp?index=1983

--MSHSL senior content creator John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected]