Joanne P. McCallie had only been at the University of Maine for a year when she started recruiting Lawrence High School star Cindy Blodgett back in 1993. She knew the University of Maine was high on Blodgett’s list, but she worried that Blodgett might opt for a bigger, better school. McCallie knew that Blodgett wore black Nikes, so she got the shoe company to provide the Lady Black Bears with shoes and other athletic equipment.

As most Maine sports fans know, Blodgett did choose Maine and helped reverse the fortunes of the Lady Black Bear program. The Nikes might not have been the difference, but that small detail shows just how little McCallie is willing to leave to chance — a philosophy embodied in the title of her new book, “Choice Not Chance: Rules for Building a Fierce Competitor,” published in July by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The book was co-written with Rob Rains.

McCallie, a Brunswick High graduate, left Maine in 2002 for Michigan State, where she led her team to the championship game at the Final Four in 2005. She is now in her 20th year of coaching and her fifth year as head basketball coach at Duke University.

“Choice Not Chance” is a primer for players and coaches, but it doesn’t read like a coaching advice book; it reads like a heart-to-heart conversation with McCallie as she recounts the highlights of her career, and reveals the thoughts, feelings, and occasional regrets that accompanied them.

The book takes readers behind the scenes of McCallie’s playing and coaching career. It’s full of details those who followed her high school career and her UMaine coaching career will enjoy. It also provides context for the decisions McCallie made. For example, we learn that McCallie left Michigan State for Duke five years ago, not only because it was a positive career move, but also because she felt that Michigan State had treated her disrespectfully in contract negotiations the year before, and because she had considered attending Duke as an undergraduate. She also reveals the pivotal role that legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski (who wrote the forward to the book) played in the interview process.

McCallie’s book transcends the label of “basketball book” when she writes about family. She is candid about the struggles and the angst of juggling a high-stress career as a college coach with the responsibilities of and the desire to be a good parent.

She recounts how she was dealing with a miscarriage the day of Blodgett’s news conference announcing she’d been drafted by the WNBA. She also reveals how unprepared she was for the rigors of new parenthood, which landed her in the hospital suffering from exhaustion. She makes clear how important it is to have a partner to share the ups and downs of parenting and coaching with, as she gives props throughout the narrative to her husband, John.

The most poignant parts of the book come when McCallie writes about how her choices affected the rest of her family. She recounts how upset her 13-year-old daughter Maddie was at leaving behind her friends in East Lansing when they moved to North Carolina. It wasn’t until Duke played Michigan State in front of a mean-spirited crowd in East Lansing a year later, that Maddie really embraced her mother’s — and her own — new life.

The introduction to the book is a heart-felt letter to Maddie, in which she reveals that the writing of this book is the fulfillment of a promise she made when Maddie was only 4. “I want you to understand my life, and in the process your life,” she writes to Maddie, who will graduate from high school this spring and play basketball at Miami University in Ohio next year.

It certainly helps to know the history of women’s basketball to fully enjoy this book, but “Choice Not Chance” dispenses practical wisdom on the importance of thinking through choices and learning from experience. And readers don’t need to know basketball to know life.