Stockton, Lisa 2005-10-10
Lisa Stockton was a member of the Wake Forest basketball team from 1983-84 through the 1985-86 season. Her family had a tradition of high school, college and semi-professional basketball excellence and much of their social activities revolved around basketball. After eleven years at Tulane she graduated 95-98% of her players. During the Fall semester of the 2005-06 school year Coach Stockton, her staff and players moved to Lubbock and the Texas Tech University campus where they spent the semester recovering from the devastation that Hurricane Katrina caused to the Tulane Campus in New Orleans. This interview was conducted in the United Spirit Arena’s women’s basketball offices two months after the team arrived in Lubbock.
General Interview Information
Interviewee Name: Lisa Stockton
Additional Parties Recorded:
Date: October 10, 2005
Location: Lubbock, Texas
Interviewer: Bill Tynan and Daniel Sanchez
Length: 01:27:26
Abstract
Early Years; Graduated Western Guilford, N. C. High School in 1982; Always been interested in athletics; Parents met while playing semi-pro basketball; Textile League teams led the AAU girls basketball; North Carolina men led the nation in basketball; Played for good, enthusiastic coaches in her early years; Never saw a six-man girls’ basketball game; Mom was a 6-man rover; Coach Wanda Briley brought her to Wake Forest and the ACC; Stockton excelled in AAU track during high school; Threw shotput and discus, ran 800 and long-jumped; College Days; Exercise and Sports Science student; Liked her professors; Building Wake Forest program was frustrating and exciting; Defeating Maryland, a top five team is a huge memory; Women played games on-campus in old gym; Worked at many girls basketball camps in the summers; Choose grad school over post-college basketball opportunities; Passed on opportunity to play basketball in Spain; At 23, graduated with masters and went straight into coaching; Became head coach at Division III Greenville N.C. College; Turned out to be a great move for her; Stayed for three years; Major College Basketball Coaching; Took job at Georgia Tech as recruiting coordinator; Georgia Tech man’s and women’s basketball were on an equal level; Moving to Tulane was similar to Wake Forest days; Kevin White was the AD at Tulane; He hired Stockton; It was a great fit for her; Loved the atmosphere at Tulane; Moving team to Texas Tech was her biggest challenge; Before that, her first team was a big challenge; Sandy Barber, as women’s AD, was her biggest helper; Sandy helped her grow as a person; Travel was first class: drove to close games flew to others; Women’s basketball is better now than ever before; Women’s basketball; Players are more talented now; The skill level improves as the years pass; Her assistants are good recruiters; High school recruits have more opportunities today; Women’s basketball gets more exposure today; More competition makes things better; Texas high school coaches do a good job drilling their players; Stockton votes for top 25 team polls; Also speaks at coaching conventions; NCAA does a good job running the women’s championship tourney; Women’s basketball (continued); NCAA basketball does a better job than NCAA baseball does; Enjoys playing at arenas with a great environment; She relishes enthusiastic fans in the stands; Texas Tech and Stanford were good places to play; Texas Tech has the nicest college arena her teams have played in; Playing against great women’s coaches is a tremendous experience; Women tend to teach at their conventions or tournaments; Men tell war stories at their conventions and tournaments; New Orleans Sports Council did a great job sponsoring the Final Four; Stockton does not get too caught up in her success; International Basketball; Has not gotten too involved in it; Doesn’t want to take six weeks time away from her team; Tulane likes to travel to out-of-country tournaments; They have taken a trip to Europe that was enjoyable; NCAA Women’s Basketball; There are no “gimmie games” on anybody’s schedule these days; Expects both NCAA tournaments to expand beyond 64 teams; Keep the rules the way they are now; If it’s not broken, don’t change it; Took a summer team trip to Belgium, France and Germany; The players stayed in private homes; It was a much better experience than taking a travel agents tour; They played a team in Frankfurt; One of the players was from Germany; The team stayed with her parents; Future Career Ambitions; Opportunities exist for third coach and operations assistants; Wake Forest would not be the right place to move to now; Does not keep scrapbooks, but that is a great idea for fans to do; Does not have a booster club; Hurricane Katrina and its impact on their program; After the hurricane hit, the Texas schools really stepped up; Texas Tech’s president was really tremendous; Players and coaches arrived in Lubbock 24-hours after deciding to move; Marsha Sharp and her staff were tremendous; Vouchers to buy clothing were donated; The NCAA lifted the prohibition about accepting gifts; Comments on her time at Texas Tech; The girls stayed in Tech dorms; She and her staff live in apartments; Campus Police gave the girls bicycles to use; The girls had to get used to walking to class on the Tech campus; Displacement forced changes to their (2005-06 season) schedule; The LSU game will now be played at Baton Rouge; They are going to pay our way back home to New Orleans; Her team seems to be bonding together rather than falling apart; The girls are not in very good playing condition; The staff is bonded closer than ever now; She is proud of her team, they see the reality of their situation; The reality of the destruction in the New Orleans area is overwhelming; Stockton’s athletic career at Wake Forest; Wake Forest was not very competitive in the ACC; In retrospect, her career at Wake Forest gets better; She started for four years and set many records (for that time); The team had its best record her senior year; Scholarship discrepancy amongst ACC schools; Early years at Wake Forest; Freshman year, she grew up and learned a lot; She saw the game from a coaches perspective; After freshman year she became more confident in her role; Now, the intensity level and physicality are different; Coaching; She learned from the good and bad coaches she played for; Coaches have different philosophies; They steal other coaches’ philosophies for themselves; Tulane coaches sit in on Marsha Sharp’s practices; The time at Texas Tech is like a sabbatical studying Marsha’s team; Training and injury prevention; Doctors at Tulane are studying strength training and women’s injuries; Trying to discover how to avoid injuries.
Access Information
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Recording Format Notes:
Transcript: No transcript available
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