By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
            Even though she earned All-ACC Freshman Team honors in 2013 when she started 31 games for the Maryland Terrapins, Chloe Pavlech knew she wasn't destined for the WNBA. 
            "As much as I want to develop the overall basketball player, it's more important to me to invest in the girl, or the woman, as a whole," said Pavlech, in her first year as an assistant coach with the Baylor women's basketball team, "just because I had teammates who put so much into basketball, and then it didn't work out for them. They struggled in life and they're still struggling.
            "I knew I wasn't going pro, so there were other things that I invested my time in while I was in school that I think helped me get where I am now. Just knowing that at the end of the day, these are going to be young women, so how to prepare them for life."
            In her senior player bio at Maryland, where she graduated in three years with an undergrad degree in journalism, Pavlech said she wanted to become a sports broadcast or coach. Five years later, at 26 years old, she's already been both.
            "I always knew that I wanted to coach at some point," said Pavlech, who returns to her Maryland roots when the sixth-ranked Bears (3-0) play No. 3 Maryland (5-0) at noon Sunday in College Park, Maryland. "When I was young, I wanted to be president, I wanted to be a weather woman. There were so many things I wanted to do, and I'm still like that now. But, I always knew coaching was in my blood just because of all the great coaches that I had had."
             That included Tom Jenkins with Sports City U. and Paula Hayden at Sycamore High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was an honorable mention All-American and inducted into the school's hall of fame. The No. 23-ranked point guard in the country, Pavlech had Maryland as her "dream school" since the 5^thgrade. 
            "I had gone to the basketball camps basically every year," she said. "I remember when (Maryland coach Brenda Frese) first sat me down in her office and asked me how long it would take me to accept if she offered me a scholarship. I said I wanted to wait until my senior year, because I had some teammates that were really good and I wanted them to get some looks."
            As soon as Pavlech left the coach's office, Frese called her with the offer. This was going into her sophomore year at Sycamore. 
            "I started freaking out," she said. "I'm in the car with my grandma driving back to Ohio after the camp. I called my mom and asked her what I should do. My mom said, 'Didn't you tell her you were going to wait?' And I was like, 'Yeah, mom, but it's Maryland!' I called Coach Frese that day and told her, 'Absolutely yes!' It was just a no-brainer for me."
            The starting point guard for the Terps as a freshman and senior, Pavlech's best season was her first, when she averaged a career-high 5.5 points and 4.0 assists, had 33 steals and knocked down 32 3-pointers. She was also on Final Four teams in 2014 and '15, losing to Notre Dame the first year and then UConn in 2015. 
            "I can't say enough great things about Coach Frese and the Maryland program and just my teammates," Pavlech said. "My best friend is Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, who's a year younger than me and playing in the WNBA with the Washington Mystics. Alyssa Thomas, who plays for the Connecticut Sun, I still keep in touch with her. Even my friends outside of sports, if I'm lucky enough to get married one day, they'll be in my wedding."
            Initially going the coaching route, she was a graduate assistant at UConn under legendary coach Geno Auriemma, earning her master's in sport management in 2018. She started with the Huskies in August 2016, eight months after playing against them in the Maggie Dixon Classic at Madison Square Garden. 
            "I'll never forget my first day there, I sat down for breakfast check, and Kia Nurse walks in and says, 'What are you doing here?''' Pavlech said. "She was so confused, and I was kind of taken aback, too. I felt like a traitor.
"But, it was so awesome there, working with CD (Chris Dailey), Marissa Moseley, Shea Ralph and Coach, too. They were so great to me when I was there and just showed me what it meant to really work at a high level in a high-stress environment."
After going to two Final Fours with UConn in 2017 and '18, Pavlech had a couple coaching job offers, "but I knew there were still other things I wanted to do."
Moving back home to Cincinnati, she started the She Hoops Network with business partner Marcus Crenshaw, a venture that was eventually purchased by OvertimeWBB. She served as talent, lead content strategist and eventually Director of Women's Basketball at Overtime, which became the first women's sports account to reach 1 million followers on TikTok.
"Everyone today says they want to be an entrepreneur because they don't want to work for somebody else," Baylor head coach Nicki Collen said. "But, really hustling and being good in your field, that said something to me about her.
            Squeezing a lot of work into a three-year stretch, Pavlech was also a color commentator and sideline reporter for American University and the University of Maryland on the Big Ten Network and served Togethxr as talent and emerging platform strategist for the fastest-growing sports account on TikTok. 
            "I felt like I got to do so much and made such a huge impact on youth and women's basketball, in general, just by following my passion at that time," she said, "which was just showing girls that they were just as important as the boys. I met so many different people, and I was able to make a lot of money at a young age. But, I also think it helps you understand that you need to feel fulfilled. You have to wake up every day and love what you're doing."
            That's what led Pavlech back to the coaching route and eventually to Baylor, where she joined a staff that includes Collen as a first-time collegiate head coach and veteran assistants Tari Cummings and Tony Greene. 
            "I was so nervous coming into this, just because of our staff dynamic and being so much younger than Tony and Tari," she said. "Tari calls herself my aunt, but she's just taken so much care of me and just made me feel great. My mom feels safe that I'm here. I talk about Tari all the time to my mom. Same thing with Tony. With him controlling the guards, and me helping him as well, I've been learning so much from both of them."
            While Pavlech can certainly be an asset with the NIL (Name, Image, Likness) issues, Collen made it clear that she didn't hire her to do that, "or why would I have put her on the floor?"
            "I hired Chloe because she wants to coach," Collen said, "because in talking to basketball people, she gets it, she wants to get better. . . . She certainly understands (NIL) better than the rest of us. She understands how you can make money via social media and all of that, and I think that's generational. But, at the same time, I didn't hire Chloe to do that."
            While Pavlech has worked with two of the best coaches in the business in Frese and Auriemma, she's convinced that Pavlech is "going to be one of the greatest."
            "She's a mastermind with the clipboard, and she's an X's and O's genius," Pavlech said of Collen, who was head coach of the WNBA's Atlanta Dream for the previous three years. "I told her the other day, 'It's so amazing, when you get in the huddle, your hand never shakes on the clipboard.' That, typically, happens with every coach. She's just so confident in her game."
            Watching Collen, Pavlech had to rethink her own goals and ambitions. 
            "I think I had to take a step back," she said. "I told her that at some point, I want to be a head coach. But, before this job, like last year in the pandemic, I was thinking I could be a head coach in maybe four years. That's just me being an entitled young person. 
            "I think I belong, and I think I'm supposed to be here. But, I'll never take for granted how cool this is, or that I'm here at the beginning stages of what (Collen) is getting ready to create. Just to only think what this is going to become and turn into, I'm so happy to be a part of this era."