Women's Basketball Coaches
ANGELA LAWSON - HEAD COACH
It was just one of those seasons that didn’t go according to plan. No, wait. That was two years ago when the Cardinals and Coach Angela Lawson were 9-18 and missed the post-season Heartland Conference championship tournament.
Last year was different. Incarnate Word after some serious recruiting by Coach Lawson and her staff rebounded with a winning mark of 15-14 and got all the way to the Heartland finals.
That made it three of the last four years for the Cardinals to advance to the finals of the Heartland tournament, one step short of a trip to the NCAA Division II national tournament. In 2006-2007, after a slow start of 1-5 followed by the month of December when they won one, lost one, the Cardinals went 5-1 in January and 11-6 for the rest of the year.
That serious recruiting produced a group of six new players giving Coach Lawson added quickness and more size inside than Cardinals fans were used to seeing. Now, another recruiting class later, UIW has aspirations of another winning year, and in the Heartland, ‘we’ll have to see’ is the password.
Coach Lawson says there is a positive atmosphere present. But almost always she says that because that is the way Coach Lawson is. She expects to win and she conveys that to her teams.
That said, the coach will tell you how she vividly remembers her first year at UIW and the pain of winning but six games with a team she inherited too late in the recruiting season to do much good. But after that, the Cardinals have posted winning records four times. And, UIW has those three trips to the finals of the Heartland tournament.
The team's graduation rate remains high, the cumulative grade point average continues to be above the 'B' or 3.0 level, and the wins are coming in greater quantities on the court. The sure hand of Angela Lawson is present and evident.
Just for the official record, the Lawson progression has been six wins the first year. Then 11 victories the next year followed by 15 in year three, then 18 and 17 followed by the eight in 2005-2006 and then last year’s 15.
This coach knows a thing or three or four about success and how to get there.
A native of Longview in the Texas Piney Woods area, she was an all-state selection and an All-American pick from a team which won the Texas state 5A title. That same year she was the state tournament MVP and was named Texas Miss Basketball.
During her high school days, while determined to get a college scholarship to play more basketball, she recalls spending every summer in the hot, un-air-conditioned gym playing with the guys who she convinced to teach her how to shoot the jump shot.
She was recruited heavily by colleges across the nation, but Louisiana Tech, in her backyard, had the advantage and that's where she landed just two hours away in Ruston, La. The Lady Techsters had won national titles and nothing would change when A. Lawson arrived. A three-year starter, Angela and La Tech won an NCAA title in 1988, her senior year.
Always intending to be a coach, she took her education northward to another haven of women's hoops, the University of Tennessee. Two years in Knoxville as a graduate assistant earned her a master's degree. And guess what? The Lady Vols won a national title the second year.
Now, more about her coaching days. It was three years as an assistant at Southwest Texas State, then six years at Baylor. Then came her turn as a head person when Incarnate Word came calling in the spring of 2000. Incarnate Word, she said at the time, "is absolutely the right place for me to start my head coaching career."
Lots of Incarnate Word fans are interested in women's basketball right now. The feeling is present that another good year is in store.
ASSISTANT COACH KATE HENDERSON
Kate Henderson has returned to Incarnate Word and to the women’s basketball program. This time around she will be the Cardinals’ assistant coach.
Earlier, for the 2001-2002 schoolyear and the ensuing 2002-2003 year, she was the UIW graduate assistant for women’s basketball. At the end of that time, and after the team had turned the corner to a winning program by reaching the Heartland Conference tournament semi-finals, she received her master’s degree in education.
She then traveled south to Texas A&M / Kingsville for a year as an assistant coach before heading north to McLennan Community College, again as an assistant. That program won a cumulative 49 games in two years and captured two conference championships for the first time in 20 years.
With that success behind her, she moved to San Marcos to spend last year as the assistant coach at Texas State University. Prior to her first stint at UIW, she was the recruiting coordinator for one year at Blinn College.
The Corpus Christi native, and King High School graduate, played two years at Weatherford College in north Texas where her teams won two conference titles and one time reached the NJCAA Final Four. From there, she moved to Texas Lutheran University to play basketball before receiving her bachelor’s degree in kinesiology.
She is a member of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, and when there is any leisure time for Kate, she says her dog Beau and all kinds of outdoor activities fill the space.
GRADUATE ASSISTANT LACEY SHINDLER
She played three years at Incarnate Word, she earned her bachelor’s degree in international business in the spring of 2007 and now Lacey Shindler will work at the Cardinals’ graduate assistant while she is earning her master’s degree.
Lacey, a native of Blessing, Texas, and a graduate of Tidehaven High School, played her first collegiate season at St. Frances University in Pennsylvania before transferring back to Texas and to Incarnate Word.
With the Cardinals, while battling leg injuries, she was the post position starter the majority of her three seasons at UIW. Outside of the gymnasium and in the classroom, she once was Heartland Conference President’s Honor Roll and twice Commissioner’s Honor Roll.
