If you attend a Stacy family reunion in New Richmond you can
expect the talk to get around to Lady Lions basketball and championships.
Sisters Bailey and Bergen Workman were in uniform Jan. 31
when the Lady Lions clinched the 2014 Southern Buckeye American Division title
with a 66-48 win over Amelia and on Feb. 8 when New Richmond won the Southern
Buckeye championship with a 47-44 win over National Division champion
Georgetown.
The previous championship by a Lady Lions team was in 1984
when twins Lisa and Lana Stacy led their Pat Hill coached team to the Southern
Buckeye championship.
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| Girls basketball championships has become a family tradition in New Richmond. Seated (from left) are Lisa Stacy Workman, former coach Pat Hill and Lana Stacy Gilday who won the Southern Buckeye Conference title in 1984. Standing (from left) are Bailey Workman, current Lady Lions coach Brad Hatfield (Lisa Workman's son-in-law) and Bergen Workman from the 2014 Southern Buckeye championship. |
Lisa Stacy is now Lisa Workman and mother of Bailey and
Bergen. To make it more of a family affair, Lisa also is the mother-in-law of
current Lady Lions coach Brad Hatfield, who is married to Brennan Workman. Lana
Stacy, now Lana Gilday, is connected to the current team as a former
assistant coach for Hatfield during Bailey’s freshman and sophomore seasons.
“We do talk basketball but she (Lisa) never second guesses
me,” said Hatfield, who has left Lady Lions fans with little to question after
four straight winning seasons including this year’s 19-2 championship team.
If Lisa had any criticism about Hatfield’s coaching style,
it probably would be he’s too soft on his girls.
“These kids have no idea what it was like to run and play
for Pat Hill as a coach,” said Lisa. “We ran and ran and ran until no team
could keep pace with us. I tell my girls
all the time that they have it easy.”
“We’ve heard that a lot,” said Bailey, who has been a
four-year starter for the Lady Lions. Bergen is a freshman and was elevated to
varsity for the post-season.
Of course, Pat Hill’s 1984 team, which went 14-6 and won the
league with a showdown win over Western Brown, didn’t have a 6-6 Josie
Buckingham, whose mother Liz Misheff played on New Richmond’s first
championship team in 1974-75, in the low post.
What Pat Hill had was the Stacy twins plus girls like Lisa
Taylor, Patty McMillian and Donna Hayslip who bought into her demanding style,
which required tremendous conditioning.
“We only had seven or eight players on that team but we
still were able to run teams into the floor,” said Lana. “We could outrun
everybody.”
“We ran our offense off our defense where we would push it
down the side,” recalled Hill, now the commissioner of the SBAAC. “We called it Snowbird where Lisa would take
off down the floor and we would get the ball to her and she would turn and
shoot the ball. If teams tried to stop us on one side we would just switch to the other side.”
“I wasn’t allowed to go into the paint,” noted Lisa. “I was
almost like a cherry picker, but I was shooting from the outside. We didn’t
have the three-point shot then and that is the area where I took most of my
shots.”
Bailey Workman has the advantage of the three-point line and
has made 33 from long range this season.
“Everybody remembers
Lisa and Lana for their offense, but they were both great defensive players and
that was the big key for us winning that championship,” said Hill, who as
athletic director at New Richmond hired Hatfield.
