Before she was blazing her own trail as a WNBA player, then coach, then NBA assistant and single mother, the plan was to be a doctor. That’s how it went in Jenny Boucek’s family. Her fraternal grandfather, Dr. Mark Boucek, was involved in the world’s first baboon-to-baby heart transplant. Her maternal grandfather, Dr. Roberth Heath, founded Tulane University’s department of psychiatry and neurology. Her father is a doctor. Her mother is a psychologist.

There was some pressure to follow in her family’s footsteps.

“That was the unspoken assumption, even for my own self,” she told CBS in Jan. 2019.

But Boucek wouldn’t settle for the expected. So she made her own path.

• More: With his role secured, Pacers' Myles Turner is ready to ‘remind everybody what I’m about’

• More: Jalen Smith set himself up for a big contract but it's unlikely to be with the Pacers

• More: 'I want to be here': Malcolm Brogdon on Pacers' future despite rough season, rumors

She’s played overseas. She’s been a WNBA head coach and an NBA assistant, first with the Kings, then the Mavericks and now the Pacers. She risked her coaching career to pursue the dream of being a mother. There’s no telling what’s next for her. But whatever the next chapter brings, she knows her purpose. And that purpose transcends basketball.

“Life is about taking what you're given and figuring out how you make the world a better place with that, doing your small part to try to make every situation better for people around you,” she said. “It's about helping people. I thought that was going to come through medicine. I was very excited about that. But my passion for the game of basketball just has continued to grow. I learned very early on through my playing experience that it's a platform to learn every life principle, and now as a coach to continue to learn life principles as well as teach life principles. The holistic growth process in my own life and in the people's life around me is really motivating to me.”

Boucek was a star at Virginia, leading the Cavaliers to four regular-season ACC championships and a trio of Elite Eight appearances. But it was what she did off the court that propelled her eventual coaching career. She graduated with a double major in sports medicine and sports management. That was an option that didn’t exist when she came to campus. She created it – and did so with a fifth year included, that allowed her to play basketball for an extra season. During that fifth year, she did six mini internships, and graduated as the No. 1 student in Virginia's Curry School of Education and Human Development. She planned to go to med school. But when the opportunity came to try out for the Cleveland Rockers, a WNBA team, she couldn’t resist.

She earned a spot on the team. Though a back injury would ultimately cut her playing career short, her experiences in the up-and-coming league sparked a desire to become a coach. She saw players that had the opportunity of a lifetime, but were discontent.

“I became passionate about, ‘Wow, we have an opportunity now as females to have the best job in the world. I'd like to help contribute to making this the best job in the world and helping create an environment that players thrive in, a true team experience and all the things that I love about team sports in its most pure, magical form,’” she said. “You can do that a little bit as a player, but you can do it a lot more from the coaching position.”

Her first WNBA assistant coaching job came in 1999 with the Washington Mystics, then with the Seattle Storm, where she helped lead the team to a WNBA title in 2004. Her first head coaching opportunity came in 2007 with the Sacramento Monarchs, where she spent three seasons before being fired and returning to Seattle as an assistant (and then being promoted to head coach for three seasons in 2015). It was during her time with Seattle that she first spent time with Rick Carlisle, who was then the Dallas Mavericks head coach.

Her first foray into the NBA came when she was hired by the Sacramento Kings as a player development coach, becoming just the third woman to be an NBA assistant. While she was with the Kings, she got pregnant via In vitro fertilization. Carlisle, who Boucek regards as a mentor and friend, was one of the first people Boucek told about her pregnancy. She joined Carlisle's staff in Dallas prior to the beginning of the 2018 season.

Twelve days after joining the Mavericks as an assistant coach, she gave birth to her daughter Rylie.

“I knew there was a scenario where this would cost me my dream of coaching in the NBA,” Boucek said in 2018. “I had to be OK with that. I had to be comfortable with that.”

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and Carlisle created a non-traveling coaching role for Boucek that allowed her to stay home for several months after giving birth.

"Women get pregnant in every workforce,” Becky Hammon, an assistant for the San Antonio Spurs and head coach of the Las Vegas Aces, said in 2018. “There are female CEOs who get pregnant. This should be no different. It speaks to how the NBA is starting to value women in leadership roles.”

In some ways, Boucek’s perspective on coaching has changed since giving birth to her daughter. In other ways, not much has changed at all.

“I've mentored, taught and developed people my whole adult life,” she said. “When you have a kid, you get to do it even more intimately. You're coaching, teaching, mentoring, discipling somebody on a minute-to-minute basis. Exhortation is my motivational gift, which is the ability to see people's full potential and try to help them see it and become it. You're just doing that on steroids when you have your own kid. It's really fun just being a teacher with her. But it's also 100% of the time. You've got live-in accountability.”

That ability to connect with people is what has carried Boucek through a decades-long career in basketball. Carlisle applauds her ability to connect with players. She worked with T.J. McConnell to help him return from a wrist injury and play the last games of the Pacers season. They frequently worked together before and after games and practices. When McConnell was still recovering from wrist surgery in January, Boucek was running sprints with him in the Pacers practice facility.

During media availability last week, McConnell interrupted an interview with Boucek to share a simple message: “Boucek is the GOAT.”

“She's one of the most knowledgeable coaches that I've ever been around,” Carlisle said. “She has a great understanding of the younger generation of player that's coming up, and the things that are important to be able to connect with them on a day to day basis. She's one of my trusted friends, and one of the very important people on my staff.”

Carlisle is adamant that he sees himself as the Pacers’ long-term coach. Presumably, Boucek will be by his side for the duration. But if life decides to intervene in one way or another, she won’t be thrown off. She’ll just find other ways to fulfill her purpose.

“When you have a kid, and the most important thing in your life is being a great mom, it has brought me even more freedom,” she said. “I hope to coach a very long time, but I could take it or leave it. I'm not hunting jobs. I'm not trying to compete with anybody. I'm here as long as I'm meant to be here, and if and when that time is up, I'm very at peace with the other big purpose of my life now which is raising my daughter.”

She hopes her daughter grows up in a world where there are more people like her – pursuing her dreams in a world where there are more opportunities to do so.

“A true team gets that it's the sum of complementary parts where you're not asking anybody to be all things. I love the unity of diversity,” she said. “It's not something that needs to be forced. It becomes something that's no longer talked about. That's when we’ve really made it because now it's not an intellectual, politically correct, trending issue. There's a heart change in our society that truly values the power of unity in diversity.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Pacers assistant coach Jenny Boucek is single mother, NBA trailblazer