Beloit College

Beloit Basketball
Stacy Schmidt May
1988-1992
 
My official visit to the Beloit College campus occurred in March 1988 when I was a senior at Hartland Arrowhead High School.
 
During the previous weekend, our basketball team had won a Wisconsin state championship. I felt like I was in a whirlwind, but I was eager to see what the Beloit team was all about.
 
Coach Barb Hebel and player Michelle Preuss had come to one of my high school games and convinced me that I needed to visit. Their relentless phone calls and Beloit College mailings prompted me to make the 90-minute trip from Hartland for a Friday night stay. That was all I needed. The rest is history.
 
When I began classes that fall, I experienced a wide range of emotions. I had left a great high school program, and I wondered whether my Beloit basketball experience could surpass the earlier times. That questioning would prove to be completely wrong, much to my surprise.
 
Barb Hebel was a tough coach who played at University of Massachusetts and conducted practices as though she was back in college. I knew it would work. We had a great deal of success that 1988/89 season. I met girls from Chicago to Davenport, Iowa, to Billings, Mont., and everywhere in between. Support from the men’s basketball team under Coach Bill Knapton was memorable, too.
 
My Dad, being a basketball coach himself, was in awe of Coach Knapton. Dad loved the idea that Coach Knapton played a role in USA Basketball and was involved in implementing the three-point line. I loved it because there wasn’t a shot I didn’t like – including the three pointers! That would continue all four years!
 
During my sophomore year, the Beloit men’s and women’s teams played a Saturday evening double-header against Ripon College, a nemesis of both teams at the time. Beloit fans in the big crowd pulled out and rustled newspapers when the Ripon teams were announced and when a Ripon player was at the free throw line. The gym actually had “both sides” of bleachers pulled out.
 
I remember getting extra practice in at “noon ball,” an institution at Beloit. That experience became the subject in the final paper for my Creative Writing course in 1992 reflecting about “noon ball and its caveats.” I know I irritated a professor or two as a result of the paper’s tone when I might have described the everyday nuances while we played.
 
My basketball experiences and my liberal arts education are two things I would never change about my life. Playing basketball allowed me to be competitive, meet numerous people and be a part of an athletic team at the collegiate level. The liberal arts education has allowed me to think broader, question things when necessary and truly appreciate the experience of a small school. Beloit gave me the opportunity to be a student and athlete at an institution that encourages out-of-the-box thinking and discourages just being a part of the status quo. My drive to Beloit for my visit in March 1988 was well worth it.
 
Stacy Schmidt May, Beloit College Athletic Hall of Honor
•          Class: 1992
•          Induction: 2004
•          Sport(s): Women's Basketball

Stacy Schmidt was a hometown hero in Hartland, Wis., where she starred on basketball teams that won three conference championships and a state title. Her accomplishments came naturally since she grew up in a home with a father who was a basketball coach. As she explained in a Beloit Daily News article in 1992, “I was pretty much a chip off the old block.” Once a Buccaneer, Stacy quickly proved that her years of experience on the court, her love of the game and the continued support of her No. 1 fans, her parents, made for a winning combination. As a sophomore, the 5-foot-6 guard became the college’s first woman to break the 400-point mark in one season and paced the team in scoring with a 19.8-point average. She led the nation in making free throws at 91.7 percent as a senior and in 1991 was named a third-team Fast Break All-American. Stacy still holds three Beloit women’s records: the all-time scoring leader with 1,462 points (16.2 average), total field goals (617) and free-throw percentage (82.5). Her honors include selection as a three-time first-team all-conference player, Buc MVP, Peterson Award recipient as Beloit’s outstanding senior-woman scholar-athlete, and “B” Blanket winner. A part-time pre-kindergarten teacher, she resides in Knoxville, Tenn., with her husband Rob, Beloit Class of 1990, and their three children.