Rotary Program: 6/16/04

Program Chairperson: Darrell Maynard

Speaker: Mickie DeMoss, Women’s Basketball Coach, University of Kentucky

Mickie DeMoss came to the U.K. Women’s basketball program in March of 2003 bringing 28 years of collegiate coaching experience, which began as an assistant at Memphis State in 1977. Two years later she went on to the University of Florida, then to Auburn University from 1983 to 1985. Finally she served as assistant to Pat Summit at the University of Tennessee Women’s team for 18 years, where the Lady Vols have complied an impressive record of 554 wins and 77 losses, an unprecedented six NCAA Championship titles and 13 Final Four appearances. Mickie is from Delhi, Louisiana and a graduate of Louisiana Tech, where she was the starting point guard for Louisiana Tech for three seasons. She holds the Louisiana Tech record for the most shots attempted in a single game.

Mickie says she had been approached by some other major college programs, such as Southern California, Nebraska and Arizona State, but chose to come to UK because of the fact that basketball is so important to us as a state given the success of the men’s program and the

potential that the women’s program could do the same. She also based her decision on the fact that Mitch Barnhart, UK’s Athletic Director had assured her that he was serious about building the women’s program with the same commitment that he had for the men. She said that she was not about to leave the best women’s program in the country for a place that did not really care

about whether the women’s basketball program succeeded or not. So, she began by hiring the best staff she could find, including Matthew Mitchell, who was the recruitment coordinator at Florida, Diane Butz, a former player from Tennessee who played on two national championship teams there and served as the recruitment coordinator at Michigan State, and Pam Stackhouse who had been at Purdue for seven years and had won a national championship there as well as being a national runner-up one year.

Since her arrival at UK, there is evidence that the program is on the right track for success. Although she did not get as many wins as she had hoped, Mickie says that the attendance records

for women’s games have exceeded every year before. UK was second in the SEC in ticket sales and was first in the nation in the percent of fan increase by going from around 200 season tickets sold to over 3,000 in the first year. She credits UK’s marketing campaigns in the Lexington area and the response of the community for this increase in fan support. Mickie also spoke of her optimism for the upcoming season and the recruits that are coming in. After losing six players from last year to graduation, she has signed two top ten players from Michigan, one of the best players in the state of Tennessee from the city of Knoxville, a Kentucky native, Sarah Elliott, from Jackson County, who is 6' 6" which will add some size in the paint, and a 6' 3" player out of Columbus, Ohio who will also help out on the inside game. In addition, there are five freshmen coming in and a transfer student from Dayton who played her high school games at Henry Clay High School in Lexington.

Mickie closed her talk with us by inviting all of us to come and watch the team play and to continue to support UK athletics in the manner that we have done in the past. We appreciate Mickie coming to speak to us today and wish her great success in the coming year.

- J. Morgan Chapman