Stephanie White to speak to Kiwanis Club Nov. 13

Thursday, November 6, 2014
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New Indiana Fever basketball coach Stephanie White will speak to the Greencastle Kiwanis Club on Thursday, Nov. 13.

Guests of the club who have been invited to the occasion at the Inn at DePauw include girls' high school teams from Greencastle, South Putnam, Cloverdale and North Putnam plus the DePauw women's team, Division III NCAA champions in 2007 and 2013.

White, who grew up in the West Lebanon, Ind., area and was the leading scorer for Seeger High School, will speak to the club and other guests at 12:30 p.m.

She joined the Indiana Fever as an assistant coach four years ago and in September this year was named to succeed Lin Dunn as head coach of the Indianapolis women's professional basketball (WNBA) franchise.

White led the Purdue Boilermakers to the 1999 NCAA national championship and was Indiana's Miss Basketball in 1995 when she was recruited to attend Purdue.

Her rise to the top of her profession began shortly after graduating from Purdue, when she was named USA College Player of the Year.

That same year she was drafted by the Charlotte Sting and spent one year in North Carolina and then returned to her home state, beginning a four-year stint with the Indiana Fever, where she became a member of the Fever's All-Decade team in 2009. She retired from the WNBA in 2004.

Parlaying her playing and coaching days into a prominent broadcasting career with the Big Ten TV Network, White also appeared on ESPN and FOX Sports Indiana. She appears regularly on the Big 10 women's studio show and provides game analysis for women's college games on BTN and ESPN.

White coached college basketball as an assistant at Ball State, Kansas State and Toledo before assuming the Fever position. During the 2013-14 NBA season, she began work as a pregame and postgame anchor with FOX Sports Indiana, covering the Indiana Pacers.

Her legacy as a prep and college star made White one of the state's most popular sports figurers before she ever put on a Fever uniform. Starting at Seeger Memorial High School in the early 1990s, she averaged 36.9 points and 13 rebounds per game while being named 1995 National High School Player of the Year.

Indiana media and coaches voted her 1995 Indiana Miss Basketball and she led the Hoosiers in their annual border war with Kentucky, splitting the two interstate games then directed by The Indianapolis Star and now played under the auspices of the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association.

Her Seeger team finished with a 92-7 record over her four years as she finished her prep career with an Indiana record 2,869 points.

At Purdue she averaged double-figure scoring four consecutive years and finished second all-time in Purdue scoring. As a senior she contributed 20.2 points and nearly 5 assists per game. She led Purdue to its first NCAA title, beating Duke University for the 1999 national title, 62-45.

Each member of the five Putnam County teams visiting the Kiwanis Club on Nov. 13 will receive a commemorative 5-by-5 inch block of Purdue's former Mackey Arena floor with White's name and the final score of the NCAA championship game on it as a gift from Fort Wayne sports entrepreneur and DePauw alumnus Tom Spiece and Coach White.

Program chairman for the event is Kiwanian Patrick Aikman, for whom White played as a 1995 Indiana All-Star on the Hoosier girls team.

Cara Goodin of the Old National Bank is president of the Greencastle Kiwanis Club.

For questions about the event, Aikman's e-mail is pat.aikman@hotmail.com. He also may be reached by calling 653-5148 and leaving a message for him with the receptionist who answers.

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