Sammi keeps it all in the family
If basketball were a way of life, the Stuart family would have it down to an art.
For this Rich County family, basketball is almost as much a part of their life as eating or breathing.
Since both her mom and dad had played basketball most of their lives, it was only natural for Sammi Stuart, a walk-on freshman guard on Utah State’s women’s basketball team, and her brothers, to grow up loving and playing the game as well.
“My mom and dad are where I learned to play from,” Sammi said. “They were pretty good teachers. If they weren’t, I wouldn’t be playing at this level.”
Sammi has been playing for USU in the first season back for women’s basketball and has been enjoying it. But she has some connections to the school, especially the women’s basketball program, that many of the other women on the team don’t have.
From 1979-82, Sammi’s mother, Cindy Stuart, coached women’s basketball at USU to its last winning
season.
“[When I started coaching for USU] I was real young, only 21,” Cindy said. “Several of the girls were older than me, but it was a lot of fun.”
When UNLV, the team that Cindy played for, came up to Utah State, the Rebels “beat [the Aggies] real bad.”
So, when USU started looking for a new coach, they went to UNLV first. Cindy and eight others on the team were graduating that year, and USU wanted one of them.
“Seven of the girls went to the [Women’s Basketball League] draft, and I took the job at Utah State,” she said. “I look back and it was a lot of fun … being young.”
The WBL was a league for women established in 1978. It collapsed in 1981.
Cindy coached the last winning season for women’s basketball at USU in 1979. It was hard for the team because they had not yet gone to the NCAA and were still in the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, and so it was difficult to get women to come play for the team. In 1982 the AIAW gave up control of the administration of women’s basketball to the NCAA.
“The girls worked hard and had fun, but it was really hard to recruit,” she said.
A lot of things happened in 1982 that made it so Cindy could not continue coaching in Logan.
USU started cutting back on some programs, and women’s basketball was on their list. The school told Cindy that if she stayed they would keep the money in basketball, but right at that time her father got terminal cancer.
She decided to go to Oklahoma and stay with her father. However, she would not be gone from Utah long. Only a few months after being diagnosed with cancer, Cindy’s father passed away.
Then she came back to Utah to marry Bill Stuart.
“My [basketball] coaching career ended when I left USU,” she said.
However, that would not be the end of basketball in her life. Her husband Bill also enjoyed basketball, so their children grew up in a very basketball-oriented family.
The Stuarts moved to Randolph where Cindy took a job teaching. They would only hire her if she coached the volleyball team and there she found another love. She started a girl’s basketball program at Rich High School where Sammi played for four years. Sammi was MVP of the volleyball team her senior year.
While she was in high school, Sammi’s brothers also played basketball. Cindy and Bill were constantly going to games. One week, between all their kids, they had 17 games to attend.
When Sammi graduated from high school, she had a hard time deciding where to go. Her mother said she had her heart set on going to a Utah school, but Sammi graduated from high school with her associate’s degree through concurrent enrollment at USU, so a junior college was out of the question.
Fortunately she looked at USU at the right time.
Cindy said Utah State women’s basketball Head Coach Raegan Pebley said Sammi came looking for them. Sammi walked on to the team and earned a spot on the roster.
“I really love the opportunity to play here,” Sammi said. “The coaches are great. I wasn’t going to come without a program, but it’s here now.”
Cindy said, “It’s just thrilling … unbelievable dreams. My husband and a lot of his family went [to USU] and it is a really neat thing in my life.”
Both Sammi and her mom are excited that USU restarted its women’s basketball program and both love USU and its atmosphere.
“I am real thrilled they brought women’s basketball back,” Cindy said. “Women need that opportunity.”
Sammi said her favorite things about USU are “how the community supports athletics. [I also like] the basketball aspect, it’s kind of like my boyfriend right now.”
The Stuart family is positive about the outlook for the second future of women’s basketball at USU.
“I think we have a great outlook,” Sammi said of her team. “Once we put two and two together we will have a good team. I think that we have a great chance to get to Anaheim [the Big West Conference tournament] and hold our own.”
Cindy said, “It will be hard, but they will have to weather the storm and they will do well.”
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu