Marsha Sharp
The 52-year-old Women’s Basketball Hall of Famer on knowing how to win, the best player she ever coached at Texas Tech (guess who?), and why rabid fans are a recruiter’s secret weapon.
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I was born in the state of Washington. My dad was in the Navy, so we moved around a little bit. I spent some of my primary school years here in Lubbock and some in New Mexico, but we lived in Tulia from the time I was a seventh-grader on. That was great for me, because none of the other communities had athletics for girls. Only small schools in the state of Texas during the sixties and early seventies had programs that girls could participate in. Tulia’s was one of the best.
What made Tulia so exceptional?
We had a coach named Bud Roberts. He was a little guy, about five foot three, and he wore his hair in a crew cut all the time, like a sergeant. He was terrific. We were fortunate to have some good athletes there, but he taught us that you not only had to have talent, you had to put skills with it. And in order to put skills with talent, you had to work at it. I got to be around a lot of girls who were pretty passionate about having a good basketball team, and together we learned to love the sport. We loved the competition but also being able to represent our school and the camaraderie you develop within a team setting. Those things I’ve carried with me forever.
You went on to play at Wayland Baptist in Plainview.
I absolutely loved basketball, and I worked really hard at it. I think I had a great work ethic. But let me say right off the bat that I was not a great player.
So you played just one year?
Yeah, on the freshman team. I hung around my sophomore year and began to coach the freshman team as a junior. I was devastated that I wasn’t good enough to play. I thought, you know, that the worst thing had happened to me, that it was an end-of-the-world kind of a thing, because I just loved playing so much. When I look back at it now, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, because I was able to coach in an environment with great coaches who are both now in the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, Harley Redin and Dean Weese. At a very young age I was able to begin that process of learning not only how to master the x’s and o’s of what’s important on the court but also team-building and handling individuals and the psychology you have to have to motivate players to get to a certain level. I was only twenty years old trying to do that with eighteen-year-olds. I was only two years removed from them.
At the same time, you probably understood a little bit better what was going through their minds.
No question. I was there for four years as an undergraduate and for one year as a graduate assistant. Wayland didn’t have a graduate school, so I drove back and forth to West Texas State, in Canyon, which is now West Texas A&M, to get my master’s in education. I did that in the mornings and came back in the afternoons to coach.
At what point did you peel off and go to Tech?
Well, first I was a high school coach for six years at Lockney, which is fifteen miles east of Plainview.
Did it remind you of Tulia?
A lot. We were in the same district with them. I’m a small-town West Texas girl, you know? So I understand the mentality of the farming community. I could sit and talk with the players’ dads about the cotton crop. My dad and grandparents farmed, so I understood how to run an irrigation ditch and chop cotton and drive a tractor. It connected me with the community, and it still does. I’m so fired up this year, because the cotton crop in Lubbock County and in all the surrounding counties is awesome. You know what that translates into? Everything is better. Every business in Lubbock is better when the cotton crop is good, because there’s money generated. The crowds are better. Our basketball camps are better. Everything changes.
Nobody would think that if the high-tech economy goes to heck in Austin, the UT basketball program is going to be in trouble. The connection between Tech and Lubbock is much greater.
I think it’s our strength. You know, there’s not another Division I university from here to Fort Worth, to Albuquerque, to El Paso. We have that entire range, and we really perceive it as Tech country.
So tell me how you got to Tech country. You were an assistant for a year before you got the head coaching job.
A lot of people are perfect fits for universities. Jody Conradt is a perfect fit for the University of Texas. Spike Dykes was a perfect fit as a football coach for Texas Tech. Pat Summitt, at Tennessee—she’s Tennessee-born and -raised. I’m a perfect fit for Texas Tech. I understand West Texas. I am West Texas. It’s my home. My dad was a Tech graduate. I can remember being a five-, six-, seven-year-old sitting in the living room with him, listening to Jack Dale calling Texas Tech basketball games on the radio. Or watching Donny Anderson play football. For me it was the ultimate compliment to get to coach at Tech.
Who’s the best player you’ve ever coached?
Sheryl Swoopes.
You didn’t hesitate for a second. Did she come to you great or did she leave you great?
She came to us great, though I think she got better while she was here. She didn’t know how to shoot a jump shot very well when she came to Tech, and we got that done. I can remember sitting in the bleachers with her at practice, saying, “You know, there’s one thing I can do for you to take you from great to maybe the greatest. It’s your choice. You need to learn how to shoot a jump shot.” And she looked at me and said, “Let’s go.” We walked out on the floor and started that process. Of course, she didn’t need it. She didn’t have to shoot anything in the middle because she was so much better than anyone around her. She could attack the rim whenever she wanted, or she could sink a three-point shot, or she could shoot a free throw. The other thing that happened to her while she was here is that her mental toughness became so much better. It’s something she needed in order to approach every big moment well. She did it.
Is there one game of the many you’ve won that you look back on and think, “That was the high point”?
When you win a national championship, you can never duplicate that feeling. But I’ll tell you about another game that stands out in my mind. The season after we won the national championship, the first game we played was against Vanderbilt. They were ranked number one in the country. We were in a Hall of Fame tip-off in Jackson, Tennessee. We didn’t have three of our starting seniors from the previous year—they had graduated. I think a lot of people thought that our program was a flash in the pan, a one-year scenario. We walked in and were able to win that game. I felt that at that moment we had defined Texas Tech as a program and not just a team.
Is there anything else left for you to do? Have you looked down the road and thought, “If I achieve this, I’ll go out on top”? Or has the end of your coaching career not even occurred to you?
You always think, “When’s the right time?” As long as I’m healthy and I enjoy what I’m doing, then this is what I’m supposed to be about. That could change tomorrow, and if it does, I hope I’ll have the courage to make the change. I really can’t see myself sitting at my house reading, and I’m such a bad golfer that nobody in Lubbock will want me on the course. But there will be something next.
Read the first chapter of Marsha Sharp’s just-published autobiography, Tall Enough to Coach.
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