The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
Hall of Fame coach C. Vivian Stringer's autobiography was aptly entitled "Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph."
Stringer certainly stood tall during a decorated career that included four trips to the Final Four, three Big East championship and six regular-season titles during coaching stints at Iowa and Rutgers.
Stringer, the 2020 recipient of the Wooden Legends of Coaching Award, left her imprint on women’s college basketball thanks to her transformational, barrier-breaking and foundational approach to the sport’s growth.
Stringer is the only coach in Division I women’s basketball history to take three different programs to the Final Four: Cheyney, Iowa and Rutgers.
She helped prove elite programs could be built outside of traditional powerhouses and that coaching excellence could travel. She won more than 1,000 games, showing sustained relevance across multiple eras.
From a cultural standpoint, Stringer became the first Black coach - men’s or women’s - to lead a team to the NCAA Final Four.
It was 1982, when representation was extremely limited, but she opened doors for women of color in coaching and made a statement by leading Cheney State to the championship game, where the Wolves lost to Louisiana Tech
Stringer normalized Black women leading major Division I programs and expanded who could be seen as a national coaching figure.
Her presence alone changed perceptions.
Player development was huge for Stringer, who didn’t inherit blueblood dynasties, as she found a way to build contenders.
Cheyney was an HBCU competing nationally, unaffiliated with any conference, but built fundamentally sound and with confidence under Stringer's careful guidance.
Iowa was never a dominant power before Stringer's arrival, but the Hawkeyes turned in 11 straight winning seasons before her final campaign ended with a ninth-place finish in the Big 10 and an overall record of 11-17.
Rutgers became a national title contender under her leadership, while the Scarlet Knights also felt how powerful her voice could be off the court.
In 2007, when the Scarlet Knights reached the Final Four after upsetting top-seeded Duke, Stringer served as spokesperson for the program during a media firestorm over a derogatory reference to the team made by controversial shock jock Don Imus on his program "Imus in the Morning."
In the wake of the controversy, the team eventually accepted an apology from Imus, and New York senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton also met with Stringer.
No matter where she coached, Stringer showed that culture, discipline, and structure could compete with recruiting advantages.
On the court, her teams were known for physical defense, relentless rebounding, mental discipline and emotional resilience.
Stringer helped shape the identity of modern women’s basketball as physical, competitive, and strategically complex - not only skill-based.
Her name deservedly stands with others, such as Pat Summitt, Tara VanDerveer and Dawn Staley, of those who have had positive impacts on women's basketball across so many eras.
