The Road to 500 Wins
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The Stockton 500
Lisa Stockton reaches 500 career win benchmark in 24th season as collegiate head coach
By Kaitlin Maheu, Tulane Athletics Communications
New Orleans - In the first round of the American Athletic Conference Tournament, the Green Wave women's basketball team picked up a dominant win over Houston - a victory that would send head coach Lisa Stockton into the record books, as she is now the 32nd active head coach in all of NCAA Division-I women's basketball to achieve 500 career wins.
After over thirty years on the college court, Stockton said she hardly realized that she was on the brink of achieving such an accomplishment.
"When you look at milestones, it happens when you're not paying attention," Stockton said. "That's probably the most fun, you're doing your job and you're coaching your team and trying to have the best team on the floor all the time and then you look back and these things happen."
Stockton credits her successes at Tulane to the student athletes she's grown to know and love over the years and the consistency in her coaching staff that share her goals for her team both on and off the court. Without a balance of academics and athletics, Stockton believes that all of this may not have been possible.
"We've always had a balance between wins and doing the right thing for our players," Stockton said. "We are not a win-at-all-costs program. Our strength has been teaching the balance of being able to achieve in everything without sacrificing one particular thing."
By taking that approach, Stockton has had success both on and off the court, including trips to the NCAA Tournament on 10 separate occasions and 14 seasons that sported records of more than 20 wins, including a current streak of six consecutive years. In addition, while under her supervision, every four-year player has completed their degree.
Throughout a career littered with accolades and storybook seasons, there are a few aspects of her time here that stand out in her mind as being particularly special.
"It's hard to narrow down a few, having been here for 21 years," Stockton reflected. "Seeing our players go from here and being able to continue their playing career professionally is tremendous. Just winning championships and seeing those players that came through the program and really contributed, those kinds of things certainly stand out. But lastly and certainly most importantly is having so many players come here and graduate. Those are probably the things I'm most proud of."
Before taking on the role of head coach of the Green Wave for the 1994-95 season, Stockton's career began in the basketball territory of North Carolina, where the sport was in her blood from the start. Her parents met while playing in a textile league in Elkin, N.C., and it seems that her career in basketball was fate from the very beginning.
"I think it was ingrained in me for basketball to be my sport," Stockton explained. "At that time, there were so many more opportunities for women starting. It was just my love for it.
I thought [coaching] would be one of the greatest jobs ever. I was probably pretty young in junior high when I thought that would be a great option for me. It was something I always wanted to do."
Stockton spent her formative college years at Wake Forest University, close to her home in Greensboro, North Carolina. The Atlantic Coast Conference member school provided her with a highly competitive basketball environment that allowed her to up her game and earn valuable experience on the college scene while becoming comfortable with taking on a lead role on the team.
"Scholarships to college were becoming an option [for women], and being able to play in the ACC at Wake Forest really started me in this profession," Stockton said. "One thing that helped me was being the point guard, in which sometimes you're the boss on the floor. That probably gave me a little more confidence to be more vocal."
At Wake Forest, Stockton set the school's career records in eight different categories - scoring (1,347), scoring average (12.1 ppg), field goals made (592), field goals attempted (1,262), field goal percentage (.462), assists (330), steals (206) and minutes played (3,385).
When her four years within the lines of the basketball court were over, Stockton made a transition that faces many student-athletes when their collegiate careers come to a close. After foregoing a National Women's Basketball Association pick following her senior season at Wake Forest, she began to make her mark from the sidelines and signed on as head coach at Greensboro College at the young age of 22, where Stockton guided the Pride to a combined 63-27 record.
Next, after spending four years as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, Stockton signed on with a university in uptown New Orleans that would carry her above and beyond the 500-win milestone she passed last weekend. While she was drawn by the school's location and feel, she stayed for the commitment to success in all areas.
"The thing that attracted me the most was it was a school that I felt really comfortable with," Stockton said. "I went to Wake Forest, North Carolina and Georgia Tech, and all those experiences really made me appreciate the kind of athletes you could attract here at Tulane. This is a place you can go and you can realize your basketball dreams and major in what you want."
For Stockton, 500 wins isn't a stopping point by any means. At the moment, it's full speed ahead towards whatever the 2015 postseason has in store for the Green Wave.
"One thing in coaching is we're never satisfied with where we are," Stockton said. "If you have 22 wins, you want 23, so it's hard to do that. [The milestone] is great, it's something to celebrate, but we're moving on. My next thing is we've got to move to 600."
At the end of the day, it's her love for the sport and her players that keeps her going.
"I wish there were more people out there that could go out there every day and work on a college campus and work with young people that are really motivated. I love the game," Stockton added. "This combination of things makes you stay in it and probably keeps you a little more youthful. It's fun, and as long as it's fun, I want to coach as long as I feel that same love for what I do."
