Sue Gunter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Gunter

Sue Gunter (May 22, 1939 – August 4, 2005) was an American women's college basketball coach. She is best known as the head coach of the Louisiana State University (LSU) Lady Tigers basketball team. Gunter was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Born in 1939 in Walnut Grove in Leake County, Sue Gunter witnessed and contributed to major transformations in American women’s basketball. She became a coach while still in her twenties and spent most of her life coaching women’s basketball at Stephen F. Austin State University and Louisiana State University (LSU).

Gunter started playing basketball as a small child, shooting at a hoop on her family’s farm. Like many young women, she went to a teachers’ college, graduating from Peabody College in Nashville in 1962. While in Nashville Gunter played guard on the Amateur Athletic Union national championship team supported by Nashville Business College.

The fact that Gunter was playing for Nashville Business College while attending Peabody reveals an important reality about women’s basketball in the mid-twentieth century. In the early 1900s, women had played basketball, but college and university administrators discouraged female participation on the grounds that the game was too strenuous, competitive, and unladylike for polite young women. From the 1930s through the 1950s, women’s basketball became a game for working-class people, supported by factories, churches, and vocational schools like Nashville Business College, whose squad played at the city’s YMCA.

Gunter played on an American team chosen to play a team from the Soviet Union in the early 1960s and then became the coach of women’s basketball at Middle Tennessee State University. From there she went to Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where she coached basketball along with three other women’s sports from 1965 to 1980. Five of her teams reached the playoffs of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, an organization Gunter helped organize in 1971.

Her success at Stephen F. Austin attracted national attention. Gunter served as an assistant coach for the US Olympic team in 1976, the first year women’s basketball was a medal sport. She became head coach in 1980, when the team did not get to compete because the United States boycotted the games.

In 1983 she moved on to the position of head coach of women’s basketball at LSU, where the women’s teams were known as the Ben-Gals. Renamed the Lady Tigers, Gunter’s teams became a force in the Southeastern Conference. Between 1983 and 2004 LSU posted a 442–221 record. The National Collegiate Athletic Association began holding women’s basketball championships in 1984, and the Lady Tigers participated in fourteen tournaments before Gunter retired. Over this period, women’s college basketball grew dramatically, with increased administrative support, budgets for recruiting and training, attendance, and television coverage.

Gunter received numerous honors, including induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame and the Mississippi and Louisiana Sports Halls of Fame. She retired in 2004 with a lifetime record of 708–308 and was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on 4 April 2005. She died on 4 August of that year.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pioneer women’s college basketball coach Sue Gunter was born in Walnut Grove, Mississippi, on May 22, 1939. She was the daughter of Lovette Golden Gunter and Ivadean (Barham) Gunter. She played basketball at Walnut Grove High School and led the team to a 44–4 record in 1956–57; she averaged twenty-eight points per game. Gunter played the 1957–58 season for East Central Community College in Decatur, Mississippi, before matriculating to Nashville Business College (NBC, 1958–62), where she led her team to the 1958 National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Championship. While playing at NBC, Gunter earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from nearby Peabody College (since 1979 a part of Vanderbilt University), which did not have a women’s basketball team. Gunter, a 1960 All-American, joined the U. S. National Team that year. In 1962 she ended her playing career upon becoming women’s basketball coach at Middle Tennessee State College (now University) in Murfreesboro, where she went undefeated in two seasons.

In 1964 Gunter became the head women’s basketball coach at Stephen F. Austin State College (now University) in Nacogdoches, Texas. In sixteen seasons, Gunter led the Ladyjacks to 266 wins. Her teams made the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) playoffs five times, often playing and defeating much larger schools from across the country. Stephen F. Austin finished in the top ten national rankings four times, won four unofficial state titles, and captured a regional crown. In both 1979 and 1980­ Gunter’s Ladyjacks finished fifth in the country in the final Associated Press polls for all schools of all sizes. In 1978–79 they finished 30–5, including wins over Houston, Mississippi, Tennessee, Maryland, Texas, and UCLA. In 1979–80 Stephen F. Austin rose to as high as number two, with wins over Texas A&M, Baylor, Missouri, Texas, and Oregon. The Ladyjacks had become a powerhouse, not as a small or medium school, but under Gunter they were a national leader in women’s basketball. SFA’s unlikely prominence was reflected in a story titled “In Nacogdoches the Ladyjacks are King” in the March 14, 1980, edition of the Eugene (Oregon) Register-Guard. The story described the difficulty the University of Oregon Ducks experienced getting to and even finding Nacogdoches to face the then third-ranked Ladyjacks, who had won home court for that season’s playoffs.

Gunter not only brought Ladyjack basketball to national prominence but was also a major player in laying a foundation for modern women’s basketball at all levels. Her early career was quite Spartan; women’s basketball was almost a novelty, and few considered it a real sport. Gunter’s two years at Middle Tennessee and her first four at SFA did not count towards the records she would set over her career, because the NCAA did not yet exist for women’s athletics. At SFA, she also coached softball, tennis, and track. “She was an administrator,” longtime assistant Pokey Chatman said in 2004. “She probably taught a class. She drove the bus. She coached the team.” In recognition of her success and promotion of women’s basketball, Gunter was named assistant coach of the 1976 Olympic team that won silver in Montreal. She was head coach of U. S. National teams in 1976, 1978, and 1980. The latter year Gunter also coached the U.S. Olympic women’s team. That team, which included two of Gunter’s own Ladyjack players—Barbara Brown and Rosie Walker—did not go to the Moscow Games because of a U. S. boycott protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. On July 26, 1980, the Stephen F. Austin Board of Regents passed a resolution in appreciation of Coach Gunter upon her retirement from active coaching, after which she became SFA’s Director of Woman’s Intercollegiate Athletics.

Gunter’s retirement from coaching was short-lived, however, and a second career in the Southeastern Conference began in 1982, when she became head coach of the Louisiana State University (LSU) women’s basketball team. In twenty-two years leading the Lady Tigers, she won another 442 games, took two SEC titles and made fourteen NCAA post-season tournament appearances, including eight Sweet 16s, four Elite Eights, and one Final Four. She was named 1983 National Coach of the Year, and in 1985 her Lady Tigers won the Women’s National Invitational Tournament. In 1994 the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association recognized Gunter with its Carol Eckman Award, given to a member coach who best reflects Eckman’s character traits of “courage, ethical behavior, honesty, sportsmanship and commitment to the student-athlete.” Gunter was named SEC Coach of the Year in 1997 and 1999. She was subsequently elected to the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 and inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005.

Gunter died of respiratory failure on August 4, 2005, in Baton Rouge. A heavy smoker who was dependent on oxygen, she had stopped coaching during the 2003–04 season because of severe emphysema and acute bronchitis. She was known for five basic coaching principles: empowering the people around you, the importance of character, flexibility, taking input, and constantly developing one’s players. At the time of her death, she was the third winningest coach in women’s basketball with an overall record of 708–308. A fellow record-setting coach, Jody Conradt of the University of Texas, told the New York Times: “Sue is one of a group of coaches who, early on, made a commitment to the sport when there was no tangible reason to do it. We weren’t paid very well. We toiled in obscurity. The joy of being able to coach young women was reward enough.” Gunter was buried beside her parents in Mount Zion Cemetery in her hometown of Walnut Grove, Mississippi.