Temple coach Diane Richardson’s basketball journey is a personal one paved by supreme ‘patience’

In 2015, Diane Richardson received a phone call from her husband, Larry, to come to Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, Md., where their daughter, Dana, had been hospitalized.

Richardson, then an assistant coach for the George Washington University women’s basketball team, was at a coaching conference in North Carolina.

Dana, who had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy at 10 months old, is 38 years old today. She has been through a life full of challenges, but that moment in 2015 perhaps was the scariest of all for Richardson and her family.

“And my husband said, ‘Something is wrong. She’s not eating or drinking,’” said Richardson, who is in her first season as the Temple women’s head coach.

Dana, who also is nonverbal, could not relay to her father that she could feel her throat slowly closing. Larry Richardson rushed her to the emergency room. When she arrived at the hospital, Dana underwent a life-saving tracheotomy during which a breathing tube was placed in her windpipe, and was put into a medically induced coma that lasted 21 days.

Rushing to her daughter’s side, Richardson caught the next available flight.

“When I got to the airport, I was visibly upset,” Richardson said. “I was crying and everything. And a couple of flight attendants and personnel for American [Airlines] just got in a circle, and we prayed and just prayed and prayed.”

She spent nights in a chair, sleeping next to Dana until she was released. Dana had to learn to walk again but recovered after her return home.

Richardson has endured tough moments alongside her family, which includes three biological children in Dana and her brothers, Donnie and Michael, the latter of whom is on the autism spectrum. Additionally, the Richardsons adopted New York Liberty guard Jonquel Jones when she was 14.

“I think a lot of love and patience,” Jones said about Richardson’s approach to raising Michael and Dana. “A lot of patience. I think that’s saying God is not going to give you more than you could bear or put you through anything you can’t handle. She’s a perfect example of that.”

At one point, Richardson balanced two jobs just to support the hefty cost of Dana’s physical therapy bills. In a way, raising children with different personalities and needs was her specialty.

“Diane has that degree in psychology,” Larry Richardson said. “So she is dealing with two kids at various ends of the spectrum. Michael is super smart, and Dana is like a 1-year-old. She really, really knows how to handle both of them. You have to treat them individually, and she knows that.”

Interestingly enough, when Richardson steps on the court to coach, she applies many of the same lessons she learned from raising her children.

Some proof arrived in the recent departure of four players from Temple’s team. In recognizing the personalities that fit the program, removing two players and watching two others go willingly, Richardson saw her Owls display renewed vigor. They rattled off three straight wins after the departures before a 65-60 road loss to Houston. With three regular-season games left, they are 10-15.

» READ MORE: Temple’s trio of conference wins fueled by a ‘new culture’ inside the locker room

Much like she does with her children, Richardson instills a positive mindset behind each player. From her perspective, it is the reason for her previous success as coach at Towson from 2017-22. She hopes to replicate that at Temple.

“It is not the X’s and O’s,” Richardson said. “... It is my relationships with my players, and I believe in them. I teach them to believe in themselves.”

The outreach she provides to those in need has garnered the respect of her locker room. The team is down to just eight active players, but all appear to fully support “Coach Rich.”

“To see that Coach Richardson is more than a coach, [she] is definitely a woman we are all comfortable with following within our leadership,” Temple guard Aleah Nelson said. “I think it’s good that she’s also a good person. It kind of shows us as a team that there is more to basketball.”

Thirteen years after Dana was born, Richardson had Michael.

He was thought to be a stubborn child by his teachers. Michael would not do the little things that were expected. So teachers would get irritated by his behavior and punish him. In school, Michael once became frustrated with a teacher who wanted him to rewrite a paper.

“They put him into detention for that,” Diane Richardson recalled. “He said, ‘I am not going to do another paper. I [have] already done it.’ [So the teacher] said, ‘No, that is not how we do things, it’s a rough draft and then the final.’ And he refused to do the final.

“My question to her was, ‘Well, when you looked at the rough draft, how was it?’ And she said, ‘It was an A paper.’ I said, ‘Well, that is what he is saying. Why should he have to do it over again when it was an A paper?’”

Michael is on the autism spectrum — which was not known at first. Unlike today, doctors did not diagnose children with autism at frequent rates. It was the same reason Dana was not diagnosed with autism until much later in her life.

Michael’s autism continued to make things tough at school. In elementary and middle school, he was bullied. To reassure Michael, Richardson would sit in the classroom to support him.

This support was needed during middle school, as Richardson said children would hit Michael as he walked down the hall. It did not stop until he was ultimately removed from school.

“They did nothing,” Larry Richardson said about the school’s alleged response to Michael’s mistreatment.

This led to Michael’s depression, which isolated him. He eventually went to a different school, but years of bullying affected his mental health.

It got so bad that Jones transferred from Clemson to George Washington after her freshman year to be closer to Michael and the family. She would play board games with Michael to cheer him up during those tough days.

“It was hard for us to watch him go through that,” Diane Richardson said. “To be on standby all the time, just checking on him, checking on him, checking on him. Making sure he didn’t harm himself.”

As a baby, Dana was not expected to eat regular food or move her limbs. So doctors told Richardson to put Dana in a “state home” when she was first diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

The recommendation, Richardson says, left her speechless for three days, but ultimately, she did not listen to the doctor’s advice.

Instead, she chose positive affirmations. Richardson says she would repeat the words, “I feel happy, healthy, terrific.”

After two years, Dana clapped her hands. At age 7, she took her first steps.

Richardson believes today those positive words changed Dana’s life.

”A lot of times we sweat the small stuff,” Richardson said. “Nothing pretty much fazes me ... Thousands and thousands of times, she tried to sit up by herself. And thousands and thousands of times, she took a step and fell down. We take those things for granted.”

Because of her experiences, Richardson believes each one of her players has a unique gift that others wish to have. She is making sure they don’t waste it.

”If something hard comes down the pike at me, I am like, ‘OK, whatever,’ because it doesn’t stop me,” she said. “There are speed bumps in life but not brick walls. We are really positive people because we know what positivity did for Dana.”