K. Vivian Stringer, a basketball coach at Rutgers University’s Women’s Hall of Fame, who first ran the college’s sideline in 1971 and became one of the leading defensive minds in her sport, said on Saturday that she would retired in September.
Stringer, the first black coach to win at least 1,000 Division I basketball games, 74-year-old Stringer, has long been a well-known and idolized figure in college sports. In recent years, however, she has sometimes been removed from the Rutgers program, which she has built on women’s basketball for more than a quarter of a century, leading in Piscataway, New Jersey. She did not train last season and missed some matches near the end of the 2018-19 season due to exhaustion.
“After recently celebrating the first women’s Final Four team at Cheyney State University, where it all began, he convinced me that I’ve been in this for a long time,” Stringer said in a statement. “It’s important to step back and challenge others to get on and keep this game going.”
Stringer won 535 games at Rutgers, where he coached in 1995 and relied on a 55-point penalty defense that used all five players under pressure across the court. Her participation in the Rutgers includes two appearances in the Final Four of 17 places in NCAA tournaments.
She also directed Cheyney State, a historic black university near Philadelphia, to the 1982 title game – the first in NCAA women’s basketball history – and the University of Iowa to the Final Four in 1993. In Iowa, where she inherited the program in 1983, who won just seven games the previous season, she turned the Hawkeyes into a model of consistency and strength at the Big Ten conference.
The NCAA Championship was ultimately elusive, but Stringer will retire with 1,055 career wins, fifth most in Division I at the Women’s Basketball College and a place in the Hall of Fame at the Naismith Basketball Memorial, which was introduced in 2009. Dozens of Stringer’s players have continued to play in the WNBA and professional leagues abroad, including Kahleah Copper, Arella Guirantes, Cappie Pondexter and Erica Wheeler.
Rutgers announced in April 2021 that he had reached a $ 5.5 million contract extension with Stringer, who was then expected to remain with the Scarlet Knights until the end of the 2025-26 season. But she has never coached another game, which fuels speculation about the program’s future.
Last season, the Rutgers scored 11-20, with a 3-14 record in the Big Ten Conference game.
Even as Rutgers announced the search for coaches on Saturday, university officials were eager to pay tribute to Stringer, who was only the second full-time women’s basketball coach in the school’s history. The university said it would name its home basketball court for Stringer, who will also receive $ 872,988 in connection with a retirement agreement.
“My life is determined by coaching and I have been on this journey for more than five decades,” said Stringer. “It’s rare for someone to do what they love for so long, and I’ve been lucky enough to do it.”
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