Growing up in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, new Florida women’s basketball coach Tammi Reiss never backed down from challenges.
The resort area was renowned for its blue-chip basketball camps when Reiss was a teen in the 1980s. She took on all comers at the Cathy Rush and Blue Star events.
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“It’s just embedded, the Tri-State area for me,” Reiss said. “I’m right on the verge of Jersey, New York and Philly, Pennsylvania. So, the best ballers back in the day — I played with guys like Kenny Anderson and the Hurleys and it just was unbelievable basketball.
“It shaped me. I played against guys; I didn’t play against girls. I went to the courts − if you can get on a court andthe guys pick you up, you can hoop. It’s who I am. That gritty New York streak, that’s what I am. I’m a fighter.”
The 55-year-old Reiss faces perhaps her biggest trial yet − how to make Florida Gators women’s basketball relevant. The first goal is to make fans care locally, given UF has traditionally lagged near the bottom of the SEC in attendance. This past season, UF ranked last in the conference in fans in the seats, averaging 2,389 fans per game at the 10,500-seat O’Connell Center.
The second goal is to get Florida women’s basketball on the national stage. The program has appeared in just five Women’s NCAA Tournaments since 2006 and hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2014.
New Womens basketball coach Tammi Reiss speaks during a press conference after spring practice at Sanders Practice Fields in Gainesville, FL on Tuesday, March 24, 2026. [Alan Youngblood/Gainesville Sun]
How Tammi Reiss’s background could spark Florida women’s basketball
Reiss comes into the Florida women’s basketball job with pedigree, as a former teammate of South Carolina coach Dawn Staley at Virginia, a former WNBA player with the Utah Starzz and two-time Atlantic 10 champion in a successful six-season stint as head coach at Rhode Island. She’s also a former nightclub owner and actress, whose IMBD credits included roles in TV series Sister, Sister and Touched by an Angel and the 2000 basketball movie Juwanna Mann.
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Reiss describes herself as both a people person and a problem solver, eager to engage within the community.
“My business background enables me to do that,” Reiss said. “I owned a nightclub, the Manhattan Club, in Salt Lake City for 10 years, and try getting a liquor license in Salt Lake City as a woman. And I owned a minority club in Salt Lake City as a woman. That was hard. That was really hard.”
In seven years at Rhode Island, Reiss said she raised between $1.2-$1.4 million for the basketball program.
“We never had a charter (flight), and we did when I left,” Reiss said. “We had a lot of charters. Never had a wellness program. We did when I left. And never had NIL. I had a very small amount of NIL this past year. Very small. We constructed a roster that won a championship.”
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Those traits could prove useful in an NIL era in which Florida is behind SEC heavyweights such as South Carolina, Texas and LSU when it comes to player compensation.
“Any coach in this day in age has to have the ability to engage with constituents at a meaningful level,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin said. “That can be everything from people who want to support NIL to rank and file people who just want to fill the stands, and everything in between.”
Reiss said she would not have taken the job if she didn’t feel she was given all the resources needed to be successful. Florida signed Reiss to a five-year, $4.75 million contract, with a $950,000 average salary that puts her in the mid-tier of coaching salaries within the SEC.
The Sun delved into the resource commitment for UF women’s basketball in a story earlier this month, which revealed UF spent below its recommended revenue share amount on its roster and the least of all 16 SEC programs in fiscal year 2023-24. Stricklin disputed the revenue report figures from 2023-24, saying that UF centralizes its costs with expenses that don’t show up on the women’s basketball balance sheet, such as school-owned airplanes for recruiting.
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“Our coaches and our sports have and will always be able to compete at the highest level,” Stricklin said. “Now we’re not going to money-whip people to win championships because I don’t think at the University of Florida we have to do that, and the fact of the matter is we want to win in 21 sports and do that, you’ve got to be really strategic. But every sport is going to have what they need to go win championships.”
Kevin Brockway is The Gainesville Sun’s Florida beat writer. Contact him at kbrockway@gannett.com. Follow him on X @KevinBrockwayG1.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Tammi Reiss eager to tackle challenge to turn around Florida women’s basketball
