Stone to Enter Blugold Hall of Fame
September 25, 2006 | Women's Basketball
Badger women's basketball coach Lisa Stone will be one of eight inducted this Saturday into the UW-Eau Claire Blugold Hall of Fame. Stone served as head coach at UW-Eau Claire for 12 years becoming the winningest coach with a 277-59 record.
The Bluegold's 2006 Hall of Fame class, which will recognized at halftime of the UW-Whitewater football game and enshrined in ceremonies after the game, includes Stone, basketball-track athlete Arlene Meinholz Beardsley, basketball player Tim Blair and his brother Mike Blair, a basketball-football athlete; track and football athlete Eric Burrell, wrestler Tony Algiers, football player Jerry Gendron and football player Roger Vann who will be inducted posthumously.
This will be the 30th class of men's inductees and the 17th class of women 's inductees and brings to 149 the number of athletes, coaches and administrators who have been honored. The Blugold Hall of Fame was established in 1973 to pay tribute, to give deserved recognition and to enhance school tradition by honoring former athletic letterwinners or coaches who showed distinctive, unique or exceptional ability while on the campus at Eau Claire and have distinguished themselves in their profession or personally since leaving the institution.
The inductions will take place September 30 at a banquet at The Plaza Hotel following the football game. Reservations for the banquet can be made by calling the UW-Eau Claire Alumni Association at 715 836-3266. Tickets are $20 per person.
LISA STONE BIO
Currently the head coach at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Stone had a brilliant 12-year tenure as the Blugold women's basketball coach during which she produced a 277-59 record (.824 winning percentage) and took 11 teams to the NCAA Division III playoffs.
Only one of her Blugold teams did not win at least 21 games and in her final campaign (1999-00), the team finished with a 28-1 record, losing its final game of the season to eventual national champion Washington University of St. Louis. Her 1996-97 team finished runner-up in the NCAA Division III tournament, losing the championship game to New York University by two points on a last-second shot. For her efforts in leading the 1997 team, Stone was named both the WIAC coach of the year and the Division III national coach of the year.
In Stone's 12 years at Eau Claire, the Blugolds won three outright WWIAC/WIAC championships and shared three other conference titles. Only once did the team finish lower than second in the league standings. Stone was selected the conference Coach of the Year five times.
Five times, the Blugolds were eliminated from NCAA play by the eventual national champion. In addition to 1997, the Blugolds also reached the Final Four of the 1994 tournament which they hosted in Zorn Arena on campus. That year, they claimed third place after losing their championship semifinal game in overtime.
Stone came to Eau Claire after a three-year stint at Cornell College in Iowa. That followed an outstanding collegiate career in which she played for one of the country's outstanding coaches in C. Vivian Stringer at the University of Iowa. There she (known then as Lisa Anderson) was named the Big Ten's Medal of Honor winner in 1984 as the conference's top student-athlete. She was a Hawkeye captain and twice the team MVP. When she graduated, she was the No. 2 all-time leading scorer, the No. 6 career rebounder, the school record holder in assists and the school single game, season and career leader in steals.
Stone left UW-Eau Claire in the spring of 2000 to take the head coaching job at Divison I Drake University and led the Bulldogs to the NCAA Sweet 16 in 2002. In her first season at Drake, she became the first first-year coach ever named Missouri Valley Coach of the Year. She is now in her fourth year as the head coach of the Badger women's program.
Stone and her husband Ed, a certified public accountant, have two children: Allison, age 14, and Tyler, age 11.
