January 23, 2025
Locked On Women’s Basketball: Stefanie Dolson on Unrivaled, dating advice, and Wicked
By The Next
Dolson: 'It was hard to train for this because we've never done it either'
On today’s episode of Locked On Women’s Basketball, host Gigi Speer is joined by Washington Mystics center Stefanie Dolson, who is currently playing for Unrivaled’s Laces Basketball club. The two discuss the new 3×3 league’s inaugural season, her many offseason plans and more.
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They started with Dolson’s path to professional basketball, starting with the work she put in to make it UConn and eventually the WNBA:
“I think it’s hard because my [older] sisters weren’t athletic, but to be frank, I’m not athletic either. I just happen to be good at basketball and tall,” Dolson said. “But my dad was my coach growing up … and he dove so far into basketball that he was driving me two to three times a week an hour and a half to the city just to get really good workouts, or individual workouts or practices. So definitely not [following] a blueprint. But I think my dad and my mom, both of them, just invested so much in me and in basketball, because I think they saw that I was possibly very good at it, so yeah, and then I just kind of went with it. UConn happened, just because I work hard. I can’t say I was the most talented when I was in high school, but I never gave up, and I always played really, really hard, which I think Gino is more about recruiting good people instead of just good basketball players.”
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They also discussed how she prepared for Unrivaled, a 3×3 league playing on a full court with different rules and strategies:
“The last few years, I’ve done kind of partial seasons, maybe two or three months in, I went in Hungary the one year. Last year, I went to France for like a month and a half,” Dolson explained. “So for this one, it just kind of depended. It was like, ‘All right, I gotta ramp it up a little bit faster than usual.’ Because normally, I kind of just keep [my] body moving until January, and then once January hits, you [really] go because, you know, the season’s coming up. So this time, it was the opposite. I took maybe four weeks off, maybe a month off, and then straight from there, I was just training five times a week until January, because I knew I had to get ready for this and I think I did a decent job. I think I’m in decent shape for this. It was hard to train for this because we’ve never done it either. So I was like, I don’t know what to train for in terms of conditioning, so kind of went with it.”
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As for how the Unrivaled experience has gone off the court, Dolson says there was some adjustment but that there’s still plenty to look forward to:
“Everyone’s been comparing it to the bubble,” Dolson said. “I think that’s the most accurate feeling of being around all these players. You’re living in the same area. So you see everyone, when I’m walking my dog, I see like, four people all the time. You have to see them when … you compete against them, then the next morning you see them in the training room. Like, it’s very similar to the bubble in that way, definitely not the same as a season. Or some people have said it’s kind of like an All Star, especially the first weekend, it felt very All Star-ish of like, seeing all these players, and you’re just like, ‘Oh my God, how are you?’ You know, so, but we’ve only been here for three weeks, so we’ll see how everyone does.”
Tune in to hear more from Stefanie Dolson about the first season of Unrivaled, her experience of being a WNBA league veteran, and more. Make sure to subscribe to the Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast to keep learning about the WNBA, women’s college basketball, basketball history and much more!
