Sports Envoy
Sports Envoy Program

Debbie Black

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  Kazakhstan
  • 2018  –  Benin

Debbie Black begins her second season as the Mocs’ assistant coach. She came to UTC as Director of Operations for Jim Foster. With his departure, she was promoted to assistant in Katie Burrows’ first season.

UTC head coach Jim Foster and Black have an extensive association. She first played for the Hall of Fame coach at St. Joseph’s leading the Hawks to four straight NCAA Tournament appearances before graduating in 1984.

Her first assistant coaching position was for Foster at Vanderbilt during the 1999-2000 season. Following her retirement from the WNBA in 2005, she returned to assist Foster at Ohio State for eight seasons. The Buckeyes advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2009 and 2011.

She spent the last four seasons at Eastern Illinois in the Ohio Valley Conference. She led the Panthers to the OVC Tournament twice and finished tied for second in the West in the 2013-14 campaign.

She represented Team USA at the Williams Jones Cup competition in Taipei, Taiwan. The team had a 7-1 record and won the gold medal after defeating Japan 56-54 in the final. She played eight seasons with the Tasmanian Islanders of the WNBL in Australia and helped them to national titles in 1991 and 1995.

In the ABL she was an All-Star selection for the Colorado Xplosion and the 1997 Defensive Player of the Year. While playing for the Atlanta Glory in December 1996, she became one of just a handful of players to record a quadruple double (10p, 14r, 12a, 10s).

In 1999, Black was drafted by the Utah Starzz of the WNBA in the second round. She played for the Miami Sol from 2000-2002 and earned the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year Award at the age of 35. In 2003 she was acquired by the Connecticut Sun in the dispersal draft and was there until her retirement in 2005.

Black was hired in May 2013, and served four years as the Panthers’ head coach, compiling a 34-80 record. Her best season was her first, leading Eastern Illinois to a 12-16 record. She replaced Lee Buchanan, who coached for one season before taking the head coaching job of the LaGrange Panthers.

Candice Wiggins

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  Nicaragua
  • 2014  –  Chile
  • 2018  –  Algeria

Candice Wiggins is the new Sports Director of Basketball (Girl’s Chair) for the Southern Pacific region of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). She will be operating clinics, leagues, tournaments and national qualifiers primarily in the Los Angeles area of the region.

After spending 12 seasons participating as a professional athlete, including a WNBA championship with the Minnesota Lynx in 2011 and concluding with the New York Liberty in 2015, Candice “Coach Ice” knows what first made her life successful on the court: AAU Basketball. In 2000, her team NJB All-Stars won the coveted 13U Girls title at the Disney Wide World of Sports in Orlando. The following year she was featured on the Disney Channel original program Totally Hoops.

A coach at heart, Candice plans to provide her service to an important sports institution, and welcomes people of all ages into the revolutionary sports platform provided by the AAU.

Bridget Pettis

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  Kazakhstan

Bridget Pettis is a former WNBA and college basketball player who is currently the assistant coach of Chicago Sky. She was a guard for eight seasons on Phoenix Mercury and Indiana Fever but before being drafted into the WNBA, Pettis played for the University of Florida.

Memorably, she completed 8 three-point shots against the George Bulldogs in 1993 which has remained the University of Florida’s single game record since. During her first two seasons with Phoenix Mercury, she averaged over 14 points per game which contributed to her career overall of 1,408 points.

In 2013, Pettis, Frank, and Eddie Johnson started a club team called Team 2j Thunder before she was hired as an assistant coach for the LA Sparks. A year later, Pettis became the assistant coach for the Dallas Wings but announced her retirement from the Wings organization in 2017.

Becky Bonner

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2008  –  Kazakhstan
  • 2008  –  Kyrgyzstan
  • 2013  –  Ukraine
  • 2014  –  Sri Lanka
  • 2015  –  Saudi Arabia

Becky Bonner enters her first season as Director of Basketball Operations for the University of Louisville women’s basketball program. Bonner joined Walz after spending the last season as the Assistant Director of Operations at the University of Maryland.

At Maryland, Bonner worked with marketing and promotions, as well as facilitating the day-to-day operations of the team, which included supervising the team’s managers.

Bonner joined the Maryland staff after a successful stint playing professional basketball in Sweden and after a four-year career in collegiate basketball.

Bonner began her collegiate playing career at Stanford University, helping the Cardinal win the 2002 Pac-10 Championship. She transferred to Boston University after her sophomore year and started in all 30 games of the 2003-04 season. She earned third team All-America East Conference honors, after averaging 14.1 points and 4.4 rebounds per game her junior year. She set the single-season school record with 72 three-pointers, while shooting 42.9 percent from behind the arc.

In her two seasons with the Terriers, Bonner connected on 113 three-pointers, which ranks fourth in the career annuals and ranks second all-time with a 37.3 career three-point shooting percentage.

After graduation from Boston University in 2005, Bonner spent the summer working for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats minor league baseball team before being contracted to play with Sweden’s Norrkoping.

Bonner is a native of Concord, N.H. She was a third team Parade All-American at Concord High School and was selected her home state’s Gatorade Player of the Year. In her junior year, she averaged a triple-double with 28.4 points, 16.0 rebounds and 10.0 assists per game while earning All-American honors from Street & Smith’s that year.

Bonner earned a degree in communications from Boston University. She is the younger sister of Matt Bonner who is a member of the 2007 NBA Champions, the San Antonio Spurs. Her younger brother, Luke, will be a junior at UMass where he is a member of the basketball team.

Valerie Armstrong

Volleyball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  China

Valerie Armstrong’s education includes a Master’s degree from Concordia University (Irvine, Calif.) in coaching and athletics administration in 2012, a bachelor’s degree in agriculture business from Oklahoma Panhandle State University (2007), and an associate’s degree from Eastern Wyoming College (2005). While a member of the Eastern Wyoming program, Armstrong was named an academic All-American. She was also named Female Athlete of the Year honors while at Oklahoma Panhandle St.

Armstrong began her coaching career in 2007 as the Assistant Coach at the College of the Southwest (Hobbs, N.M.). There, her team was ranked top ten in the region for almost the entire 2007 volleyball season. In 2008, Armstrong became Head Coach at Colby Community College, and in 2009, she became the Head Coach at Vernon College. Armstrong moved to be Assistant Coach at Alabama State in 2013 then Binghamton University in 2014. In 2018, Armstrong became Head Coach at Midwestern State University, where she still is today.

Penny Lucas-White

Volleyball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  China

Former U.S. National Team member Penny Lucas-White has just concluded her eighth season as the head volleyball coach at Alabama State University.

Shedraws her coaching expertise from an impressive playing career at the collegiate, national and international levels, as well as coaching some of the top scholar-athletes in the nation.

Career highlights include:
– Played at LSU (1980-83) and as a professional, domestically and internationally (1984-91, 1997)
– Played as a member of the U.S. National Volleyball Team (1985-86)
– Spent 26 seasons as a coach, 16 as a college head coach (Memphis 1991-95, Air Force Academy 1996-2009, Alabama State 2011-present)
Coached athletes that earned MIT, Rhodes and Alberta Bart Holaday Scholarships
– Guided the Lady Hornets four SWAC championships
Four-time conference coach of the year (twice at Memphis, twice at ASU)

During her tenure at the helm for the Lady Hornets, Lucas-White has upgraded the nonconference schedule to include trips against some of the top teams in the country.

Lucas-White has always emphasized work in the classroom and that has not changed since she arrived on the ASU campus. Following the 2012-13 season, the volleyball team received the Large Team Academic Award at the ASU Athletic Banquet based on the overall team grade point average.

As head coach at Memphis, Lucas-White led the program to back-to-back Great Midwest Conference titles in 1993 and 1994, earning Coach of the Year honors both seasons. Her Lady Tiger squads maintained a 3.0 team GPA during her tenure at Memphis.

Lucas-White took the reins at Air Force Academy in 1996, the school’s first season competing in Division I in the highly competitive Western Athletic Conference (now known as the Mountain West Conference). A total of 18 cadet-athletes earned academic All-Mountain West Conference honors, including one Conference Scholar-Athlete of the Year.

Among her community involvement, Lucas-White has been an active member of the American Volleyball Coaches Association. In 2003, she helped the AVCA receive an NCAA minority coaches grant for a program entitled “Volleyball: Live it! Love it! Coach It!”

She earned first-team All-SEC honors, as well as the MVP award, in her first season playing at LSU. After a three-year career, she left college to begin her professional playing career domestically in the United States Volleyball League and internationally in Italy and Germany.

While competing professionally in the United States and Europe, Lucas-White began her coaching career as an assistant coach at Auburn from 1987-89.

Lucas-White earned the honor of playing on the United States National Volleyball Team in the 1985 NORCECA (North, Central America and Caribbean) Games, competing against the best players in the world.

Michelle Osunbor

Volleyball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  China

Michelle Osunbor began her volleyball career playing as a Middle at Hebron High School. At Long Beach University, she was the team’s Captain, Big West Leader in blocks, and a Middle Starter. Upon graduating, Osunbor played in Brøndby, Denmark, winning the League’s Championship in 2013-2014. Following Denmark, she played with the USA Volleyball PVL Team North Texas, winning the championship in 2015.

Osunbor’s coaching history has included: Zone in Volleyball Academy (2012), Vernon College (2012-2013), Alabama State University (2013), All-American Volleyball Camps (2013-2015), USA High Performance (2016), SLAM Volleyball (2016-2017), and Volleyball Factor (2014-2017). At Vernon College, Osunbor’s team ranked 15th Nationally NJCAA, and her team at Alabama State University went on to become SWAC Champions.

In collaboration with volleyball player Allison King, Osunbor co-founded AMO, an organization that provides volleyball skills classes and summer camps across the country.

Tracy Noonan

Soccer

Served as envoy

  • 2011  –  Guatemala
  • 2013  –  Costa Rica
  • 2014  –  Tonga
  • 2016  –  Fiji
  • 2016  –  Nepal

A potent combination of talent and tenacity carried Tracy Noonan (formerly Ducar) to the top of the women’s soccer world. Her list of accomplishments includes a 1999 FIFA Women’s World Cup championship with the United States women’s national team and three NCAA championships with the powerhouse North Carolina Tar Heels. She also was a founding member of the Women’s United Soccer Association, backstopping a Boston Breakers team that included USA and international stars Kristine Lilly, Kate Sobrero Markgraf, Maren Meinert (Germany) and Dagny Mellgren (Norway).

Not bad for a player whose career was almost derailed by a broken back suffered during a high school basketball game.

Since retiring as an active player, Tracy has devoted herself to teaching and coaching, and was head soccer coach at Greensboro College in Greensboro, NC before deciding to devote herself full-time to Dynasty Goalkeeping.

Career Highlights:
3-time NCAA champion at the University of North Carolina (1991-95)
U.S. Women’s National Team goalkeeper (1996-99)
Alternate on the 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic Soccer Team
1999 Women’s World Cup Team
Founding member of the WUSA and goalkeeper for the Boston Breakers (2001-03)
Winner of the Boston Breakers Shield Award (2001)
Member of the New England Women’s Sports Hall of Fame (inducted 2001)
Goalkeeper coach at UNC-Greensboro (1998-99)
Head Soccer Coach at Greensboro College (2004-05)

Linda Hamilton

Soccer

Served as envoy

  • 2007  –  Philippines
  • 2010  –  Ivory Coast
  • 2011  –  Brazil
  • 2013  –  Chile
  • 2014  –  Bangladesh
  • 2015  –  Burma
  • 2016  –  China
  • 2019  –  Egypt

Linda Hamilton enters her fifth season as head coach of the Southwestern women’s soccer team, coming off a season in which she was named the SCAC Coach of the Year, leading the Pirates to the SCAC Championship match.

Hamilton brings a wealth of experience to the program, both as a player and coach. She played collegiately at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, earning All-America status and all-conference honors all four years. She was named the Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year in 1988. Hamilton was a member of the United States National Team, where she played in 82 international matches. She helped the team to a World Cup gold medal in 1991 and bronze in 1995.

Hamilton, who owns a United States Soccer Federation “A” coaching license, got her start in coaching at Old Dominion University as the team’s head coach from 1993 to 1995. She later served as an assistant at Hofstra University (2006-2007) and most recently served as head coach at the University of North Florida (2007-2013). She has additionally worked with the Easter Seals and National Multiple Sclerosis Society (2002-2006), serving as director of development.

Detlef Schrempf

Basketball

Served as envoy

  • 2013  –  Nigeria

Detlef Schrempf is a German-American basketball player who was drafted into the NBA by the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the 1985 NBA draft, with the eighth overall pick. Schrempf played in the NBA for 16 seasons, with the Indiana Pacers, the Seattle SuperSonics, and the Portland Trail Blazers. He also played for the West German, and later German, national team in the 1984 and 1992 Summer Olympics and the 1983 and 1985 EuroBasket championships.

He has been awarded three NBA All Stars, two NBA Sixth Man of the Year, and one All NBA Third Team. Outside of the US in his home country, he was announced German Player of the Year in 1992. During his career, he ranked second in the NBA in three-point accuracy during the 1994–95 season with a 51.4 three-point field goal percentage and became leader in the NBA in offensive rating the same season with 127 points per 100 possessions.

Schrempf established the Detlef Schrempf Foundation in 1996 to benefit local charities. His foundation hosts the Detlef Schrempf Celebrity Golf Classic at McCormick Woods Golf Course in Port Orchard, Washington, each summer and has raised about $10 million for children’s charities in the Pacific Northwest. He as well in January 2012, won the Paul Allen Award for Citizenship at the 77th annual Sports Star of the Year banquet in Seattle.