Shea Ralph

Shea Sydney Ralph (born March 12, 1978) is a former collegiate basketball player and current head coach for the Vanderbilt Commodores women's basketball team.

A scholar as well as an athlete, the National Honor Society member was a recipient of the 1995 Dial Award presented annually to the top male and female high-school athlete/scholar in the United States, earning a 4.2 grade point average on a scale of 4.0.

Ralph was named a High School All-American by the WBCA.

She participated in the WBCA High School All-America Game in 1996, scoring twelve points.

In 1996 she was named the USA Today National High School Player of the Year.

While in high school, Shea began a multi-year battle with anorexia nervosa.

It began with an offhand comment by a teammate, telling her she looked a "little thick".

She cut down her eating so significantly she dropped from 145 lb to 108 (49 kg), a very low weight for a 6 ft person.

Her AAU coach, John Ellington, was concerned about her eating habits.

One day at a post-game dinner he placed a hundred-Dollar Bill next to a plate of mozzarella sticks and told her the money was hers if she would just eat the mozzarella.

She turned him down.

So he had to up the stakes, and told her to gain weight or she was off the team.

The prospect of not playing basketball persuaded her to eat.

Despite barely eating, she still managed to score 3,002 points in her high school career.

Ralph was the subject of a spirited recruiting battle, a natural consequence of her abilities leading to national high school player of the year honors.

Many programs pursued her, but two schools appeared to have better chances than Connecticut.

Ralph's mother, Marsha (Mann) Lake, was an All-American basketball player for the University of North Carolina.

The North Carolina program was one of the better programs in the country.

Ralph was growing up in North Carolina and her name was a "household word since she was eleven years old".

Another premier program, the University of Tennessee, was also very interested in Ralph.

The head coach of Tennessee, Pat Summitt, was good friends with Marsha, so many felt one of those two schools would have the inside track.

Ralph called Geno Auriemma, the Connecticut coach, to ask what kind of role he envisioned for her at UConn.

It is not uncommon for coaches to promise starting positions and a minimum number of minutes playing time for highly promising recruits.

However, Auriemma responded, "I don't know. If you are really, really good, then you'll have a chance to play a lot. But if you suck, you won't play at all."

Shortly thereafter, she made a recruiting visit to UConn, and told the coach she was ready to commit to Connecticut.

She went on to have a great senior season in high school.

After she earned the USA Player of the Year award, she was interviewed by USA Today, who asked about her recruiting decision.

She explained, "Coach Auriemma was the only coach that told me if I was really good I'd play a lot, and if I sucked I wasn't playing."

Auriemma read the quote in the paper and "almost [fell] off his chair."

He called her to say, "Geez, Shea. Did you have to [get it] in the paper?"

She suffered five ACL injuries in her career, two of which led to sitting out the 1997–98 season.

Ralph was drafted by the WNBA Utah Starzz, but recurring knee problems prevented her from embarking on a professional career.

She helped win a national championship as a player at the University of Connecticut in 2000 and won numerous individual awards, including the Sports Illustrated for Women Player of the Year and the Honda Sports Award for the best collegiate female athlete in basketball.

Ralph started her coaching career as an assistant coach at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003.

Shea Ralph grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she attended Terry Sanford High School.

She was named Athlete of the Year by the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.

The Terry Sanford High School graduate is best known for her basketball prowess, but she also lettered in soccer, cross-country, and track.

At the time of the award she held 17 state basketball records, including 39.1 points per game as a junior, a 71.6 percent shooting percentage from the floor as a junior, and 18 assists in one game.

She was previously an assistant coach at UConn from 2008 to 2021.

Ralph was proficient in multiple sports, set state high school records in basketball, and earned multiple national player of the year awards in high school and college.