By ROBERT CESSNAOne of the few people who can upstage Texas A&M women's basketball coach Gary Blair is Blair himself. During his press conference Monday even he had to smile and shake his head when his cell phone's ring tone blared out Born to Be Wild.
"I put that on two years ago," Blair said. "I was tired of being bored."
This from a man who dressed in leather and rode a motorcycle into Reed Arena at halftime of a men's game to promote his team, who almost broke a leg riding a skateboard two years ago in Los Angeles to show his players and supporters he still could do it, and who while batting in a Texas Collegiate League game last summer tried to bunt to use his speed to beat out a base hit.
He's been an even better thrill-seeker as a coach. He won his 500th collegiate game last season, and his 6-0 Aggies are ranked a program-best fifth in the country.
Blair will add another honor Tuesday when he's inducted into the Stephen F. Austin's Ladyjack Hall of Fame.
"I guess I'm finally old enough," quipped the 63-year-old, who just as quickly turned serious. "It is an honor to be named in the same breath as Sue Gunter, Barbara Brown and Rosie Walker. SFA will always be a special place to me, because they gave me my first start in coaching."
The ceremony will come at halftime of the non-conference game, which will start at 7:30 p.m. It won't be the first time Blair has coached a Top 25 team in 7,203-seat William R. Johnson Coliseum.
Blair was 210-43 from 1985-93 with the Ladyjacks, winning seven straight conference championships. He led SFA to six NCAA Tournaments, winning at least one tourney game each time and making four Sweet 16 appearances. He was the Southland Conference's Coach of the Year five times.
He credits his assistants -- Candi Harvey, Neil Fortner, Sue Donohoe, Julie Thomas and current SFA head coach Lee Ann Riley -- for much of his success. Harvey coached at A&M and for San Antonio's WNBA team, Fortner coaches at Auburn, Donohoe is the NCAA vice president for Division I women's basketball, and Thomas starred at A&M Consolidated.
Blair calls SFA one of the "meccas" of women's basketball along with Louisiana Tech, Old Dominion, Western Kentucky and Wayland Baptist.
"This is where basketball was played," Blair said. "Well before Texas, Texas Tech and Baylor. They were second-fiddle to those schools in the 1970s and for a long time in the '80s."
What a school like SFA didn't have 20 years ago was money to spend on promotions, which made Blair sell his product by word of mouth.
"My first full-time position was serving as the women's sports information director at Stephen F. Austin during Coach Blair's tenure," said Joni James Lehmann, current Big 12 associate director of communications. "At the time, I was very inexperienced and learned a great deal from him. He was a key figure in the community and was tireless in his endeavor to promote his program and women's basketball as a whole on the local, regional and national level."
Blair hasn't changed much, he just has a larger audience.
He said one of the first things he'll do is lobby for more of his former players at SFA to be inducted into the Hall of Fame along with him. The Nacogdoches Chamber of Commerce might want to get Blair of do some promotional work. Blair's son, Matt, was born there in 1986, and the Pineywoods always will be a home for his family.
"Living in Nacogdoches was a tremendous experience," Blair said. "Life stands still there. I think Wal-Mart is the only thing they've added since I left. It's a good place to send your kids to school. It's a good place to work. I have some loyal, great friends over there."
Blair and members of his immediate family will spend Tuesday night with friends in Nacogdoches.
This will be A&M's sixth straight road game, but Blair's players understand its significance by what the coach doesn't say.
"The other day he mentioned it," senior forward Danielle Gant said. "He said the other team will come after us a little bit harder. It's his old home, but other than that, he hasn't said anything about it."
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NOTES -- SFA is 4-2. Baylor pinned a 77-42 loss on the Ladyjacks. "That was in Waco, not Nacogdoches," Blair said. SFA's other loss was at Memphis (64-52). ... The game will be broadcast on KZNE (1150 AM). ... A&M point guard Sydney Carter was named co-Big 12 Conference freshman of the week. Carter had 17 points in a 70-60 victory over Pepperdine.
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Posted by: On: 12/2/2008
Comment Title:
Don't fall for the false advirtisement about Nac-o-nowhere. SFA (school for alcoholics) is a disorganized mess, the professors are more worried about their own personal gains/research than actually teaching. And if you have young kids going to school, better check the statistics first. That is probably why all the professor's kids go to private schools her in Nac-o-roaches. Check out those statistics more than a few of the public school couldn't even report the average scores of Caucasians due to there wasn't enough of them to report without revealing their identity. Nac is the oldest town in Texas, which implies the racial barrier and hatred runs deep in these pineywoods.
Posted by: JW Class 70 On: 12/2/2008
Comment Title: Blair
Congratulations coach.