There’s a sports team in Nevada whose success has been unmistakable.
It’s not WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, who won two championships in a row. Or the Vegas Golden Knights, who took home the Stanley Cup this year. Or even UNLV’s football team, which is going to a bowl game for the first time in a decade.
UNLV’s Lady Rebels, the women’s basketball team, has won more than 85% of their games, including NCAA tournament play, over the last three years. This year, they’ve won their first eight games.
And all of this success began when Lindy La Rocque became coach of the team in 2021.
LaRocque talked with State of Nevada host Joe Schoenmann about the keys to that success, much of which stems from what she learned from her dad, Al LaRocque. He coached her and her sister at Durango High School. He also led the boys’ team at
Durango to two state championships before retiring.
”We grew up in the gym with my dad and his teams and my mom — and they're both school teachers,” La Rocque said. “So that was our lifestyle.”
In her first year as coach, she took the team from an overall record of 15-9 in the 2020-21 season to 26-7. That year, she became UNLV’s first Mountain West Conference coach of the year. She did it by creating a culture and attitude that her players were good enough to be in the NCAA’s Division One. And they were good enough to be winners.
“As coach, I can figure out, you know, how to put the puzzle together and get them to work hard together to buy into a great culture, and to win,” she said.
“I’m a very offensive minded coach, and I think that was different for those players,” she added. “So getting them to believe in that, and (in) their own offensive strengths and build their own confidence. And then infusing my own confidence in them. And, you know, putting a scheme together that I think fit our personnel was important.”
La Rocque went to college at Stanford University, where she played on a team that went to the NCAA Finals four years in a row. She is also the first of eight Lady Rebels coaches who grew up in Vegas, where she relishes the idea of being able to succeed in front of men and women who worked with and taught her throughout her career.
“I think being able to share this experience and the success ... with people that I've known for a long time that invested in me when I was a little tiny tot—that’s really special to me.”
When La Rocque was at Stanford, her dad only missed a handful of games over four years. As a new parent now, she realizes how big of a commitment that was.
Today, her dad and mom, Beverly, rarely miss a home game. And sometimes her dad offers advice but only if she asks.
“You know, now me being a head coach, he’s got a great pulse on kind of knowing me, but lets me kind of come to him when I need advice or help,” she says. “It’s an outside perspective that I really trust.”
Guest: Lindy La Rocque, coach, UNLV Lady Rebels
