Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Timing right for Stephanie Rempe, a Wildcat turned Nevada AD

The Star's longtime columnist checks in with news on ex-Wildcat Stephanie Rempe, a look at Tommy Lloyd's exhausting week and Terrell Stoglin's world travels.

Stephanie Rempe makes good on prediction, becomes Nevada AD

The timing was appropriate last week when the Nevada Wolf Pack hired 1990s Arizona volleyball player and athletic department official Stephanie Rempe as the school's athletic director on the 50th anniversary of Title IX legislation.

Rempe became just the 11th sitting female AD of 131 FBS, Division I schools.

Why is this relevant in Tucson? Rempe is a Wildcat to the core. Her father, George Rempe III, is a graduate of the UA Law School. Her brothers and two cousins graduated from Arizona. When Stephanie Rempe had an exit interview with Arizona AD Jim Livengood in 1998, Livengood asked her what her career goals were.

"Someday I’d like to have your job," said Rempe, a nugget from a conversation I had with Rempe two years ago.

Rempe’s road to becoming an athletic director began in Tucson, moved to UTEP and swiftly climbed upward; she became the No. 2 administrator in the athletic departments at Washington, Oklahoma and LSU before she was hired by Nevada last week.

Title IX legislation, passed on June 23, 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government. The advancement of job opportunities have probably been most visible in women’s college athletics.

For example, 12 years after Title IX was passed, 1984, the UA athletic department had a small handful of female employees: administrators Mary Roby and Rocky LaRose, coaches Judy LeWinter, Paula Noel, Kim Haddow and Rosie Wegrich, strength coach Meg Ritchie and a few secretaries.

Today, the UA athletic department lists 76 female employees of the 251 listed in its staff directory. Opportunities have multiplied many times. Arizona employs women in such roles as assistant director of football operations; assistant team physician; sports dietician and director of student-athlete academic development.

The most senior member of the UA athletic department is a woman, Judi Kessler, hired in 1984 as a bookkeeper. Kessler is now associate AD for major gifts.

Athletic director Dave Heeke’s high command includes three women: Suzy Mason, Erika Barnes and Krystal Swindlehurst.

It’s not that the Pac-12 is a model for Title IX advancement. Over the 50 years, only four women have served as Pac-12 athletic directors: Cal’s Sandy Barbour, Washington’s Jen Cohen and Barbara Hedges and ASU’s Lisa Love.

Yet over those 50 years, the Pac-12 has employed 57 athletic directors. It’s not a sign of progress that the Pac-12’s Cohen and now the MWC’s Rempe, are the only female ADs in the West’s two leading conferences.

Rempe, 50, last week told Nevada reporters that becoming an AD "is a complete and utter joy." It was unimaginable when she left Tucson 24 years ago.

Outside of employment opportunities for women in the UA athletic department, Wildcat female athletes have thrived across the last 50 years. It would be almost impossible to designate four UA athletes to be featured on a Mount Rushmore of success.

How could you pick four from a group that would include softball’s Jennie Finch and Jenny Dalton-Hill, basketball’s Aari McDonald, track’s Amy Skieresz and Tanya Hughes, golf’s Annika Sorenstam and Marisa Baena, volleyball’s Kim Glass, swimming’s Crissy Perham, Lacey Nymeyer John, Whitney Myers and Amanda Beard, among others?

But there is progress to be made. When title IX celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2072, it would be nice if more than 11 of 131 Division I athletic director’s jobs belonged to women.

Tommy Lloyd's exhausting week ends with trip to Pinetop

A lot of college basketball coaches use June as a month to recharge, sit by the pool and get away, traveling with family members. After a heavy recruiting calendar in May, Arizona's Tommy Lloyd had to be gassed.

If not get away in June, when? July is the sport’s biggest recruiting month. Individual workouts intensify in July and school begins in August.

But Lloyd was still on the clock last week.

He spent time with an out-of-town guest, Rui Hachimura, a former Gonzaga All-American, now a starter for the NBA Washington Wizards, who flew to Tucson to visit the man who recruited him from Japan in 2015. He found time to take the McKale statistics crew to lunch. Those long-time statisticians, including Tom Duddleston, Jay Gonzales, Nick Duddleston and Gene Gonzales — along with the UA events management staff — were treated to lunch at the Sands Club.

Lloyd thanked them for their service.

He spent the bulk of three days at McKale Center and the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium with about 150 young Tucsonans aged 6-14, at the Tommy Lloyd Basketball Camp. He arranged for Dalen Terry to speak to the campers.

Lloyd spent Thursday in Phoenix at Terry’s NBA Draft party, and on Friday drove to Pinetop to spend time with scores of UA boosters at the annual "Bear Down in the Pines Weekend."

Lloyd mingled with UA fans and fellow Wildcat head coaches Jedd Fisch, Laura Ianello, Jim Anderson and Adia Barnes to help promote the athletic department. Let’s just say Rich Rodriguez and Sean Miller weren’t always regulars at those offseason fan engagement affairs.

Lloyd also arranged to hold a virtual press conference session a day after the NBA draft. Again, not something his predecessors or other Pac-12 coaches often agree to do.

In 14 months at Arizona, Lloyd has gone far beyond just being a basketball coach. And the best should be yet to come.

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Tucson's Terrell Stoglin shines in Africa

Terrell Stoglin, who led Santa Rita High School to the 2010 state basketball championship and became the ACC’s leading scorer at Maryland two years later, is playing in the finals of the Basketball Africa playoffs this weekend. He led the league in scoring, averaging 30.8 points per game in the regular season. Stoglin played the first half of the year in the Iraq Pro League, which added to his almost unmatchable career list of stops in global basketball. Stoglin, 31, has played in Greece, France, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt. Stoglin is playing for Morocco’s As Sale franchise, where he was Africa’s MVP in 2021.

Stanley Cup finals have Tucson tie

Tucson native Shane Gillooly is in the middle of the frenzy in Denver as the Colorado Avalanche attempt to win the NHL Stanley Cup. Gillooly is the hockey equipment supervisor and visiting clubhouse manager for the Avalanche, which put him in so-called "enemy territory" for Friday's Game 5 against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Gillooly, whose father, Tim Gillooly, is one of the leading high school baseball pitching coaches in Tucson — he helped Sabino win a state championship recently — moved to Denver about 10 years ago to be the Colorado Rockies’ visiting clubhouse manager. He has been with the Avalanche for three years

Conquistadores donate $723K

The Tucson Conquistadores, who are celebrating their 50th year as the financial and organizational group of pro golf events in Tucson, last week announced they contributed $723,000 to local charities from the 2022 PGA Tour Champions event, won by Miguel Angel Jimenez. That moved the Conquistadores total donation to Tucson charities a shade past $37 million since iconic Tucson businessmen like Roy Drachman, Fred Boice and Hi Corbett began operating the Tucson’s PGA Tour events in the ’60s.

Locals headed to Pinehurst

Tucson’s success as a youth golf community will be manifest this week when six golfers will be at the famed Pinehurst Golf Club in North Carolina to compete in the National High School Golf Girls Invitational, Monday through Wednesday. It’s an invitation-only event with 220 golfers. They include Ironwood Ridge’s three-time state championship team members Makenna Brown, Raina Ports, Celia Schrecker, Charlotte Schrecker and Hannah Ports. Also in the field is Salpointe Catholic’s Mackenzie McRee, who won state championships for the Lancers in 2018 and 2021. Ironwood Ridge's Doug Kautz has coached the Nighthawks to three consecutive state titles.

Ex-Dorados up for award

Two of the leading softball players in Tucson history, CDO pitcher Kenzie Fowler Quinn and CDO catcher Samantha Nettling, are finalists for softball’s first "Golden Mic" Awards. Quinn, who pitched Arizona to the 2010 national championship game and works in the creative services office of the UA athletic department, is one of six finalists for the leading analyst in college softball and also a finalist with partner Cindy Brunson in the Broadcast Tandem category. Nettling, an All-Big Ten catcher at Northwestern who works for Google in Chicago, is a finalist as Best Studio Analyst. Quinn works for the Pac-12 Networks and ESPN. Nettling works for the Big Ten Network. The public can vote online at extrainningsoftball.com until Tuesday. Winners will be announced Friday.

Oregon firing a stunner

It seemed hard to believe last week when the Oregon Ducks announced that the school's head track coach, Robert Johnson, will not return in 2023. Johnson, who has been Oregon’s head coach for 10 years, won 14 NCAA championships in men’s and women’s competition. The Ducks did not make a public comment on why Johnson has been terminated. Johnson is the third prominent Pac-12 track coach to leave his post in the past three years: UCLA’s Caryl Smith Gilbert went to Georgia and Stanford’s Chris Miltenberg left for the North Carolina Tar Heels. That leaves Colorado's Mark Wetmore (27 years) and Arizona’s Fred Harvey (21 years) as the deans of Pac-12 track coaches. Harvey has some rebuilding to do; the Wildcats did not score a point in the NCAA men’s championships earlier this month, only the third time in modern school history it was blanked.

UA recruit Kiko Romero awaits draft fate

One of Arizona baseball coach Chip Hale's leading Class of 2022 recruits, Central Arizona College national champion Kiko Romero of CDO, is playing for the Corvallis Knights of the West Coast Collegiate summer league. Ordinarily, Romero would have been drafted earlier this month and perhaps already turned pro. Romero hit .366 with 25 homers for CAC’s championship team this season and was named top hitter at the JC World Series. But because Major League Baseball has pushed its draft back a month, from early June to July 17-19, most prospects are playing in a summer league. Nor is it assured that Romero will be drafted. MLB reduced the draft to 20 rounds, shrinking from about 1,200 players selected to 616. Romero hit six home runs in the JC World Series, tying a 50-year NJCAA record.

My two cents: Add Kelsey Slade to list of top recruits

Ordinarily, it would be a reach to think that Tucson’s high school Class of 2024 would produce a five-star recruit to match Salpointe Catholic defensive end Elijah Rushing, who last week visited and was offered scholarships by Clemson, Georgia and Tennessee; and earlier received offers from Arizona, USC, Notre Dame, Florida, Oregon and most of the big names in college football.

But Elijah has company from Cienega High School gymnast Kelsey Slade, who is now rated a five-star recruit by College Gym News and is being sought by the elite of the elite in NCAA gymnastics.

She is ranked No. 4 overall in the Class of 2024 and has scheduled September visits to the blueblood programs of college gymnastics: Michigan, Utah, LSU and Oklahoma.

In recent months, Slade won the all-around competition in the Region One championships in her age division. At the Developmental Program National Championships in May, she won the vault competition with a score of 9.9. She has scored a perfect 10 twice this season in other competitions, said her coach, Regina Mueller-Martin, of Arizona Dynamics gymnastics center.

Mueller-Martin knows elite talent when she sees it. She trained Amphi's Kassandra Lopez, who became an All-Pac-12 gymnast on Utah’s powerhouse teams of 2012-16, and Sabino's Madison Mariani, who was part of Michigan’s 2021 national championship team.

Now comes Kelsey Slade.

More from Star columnist Greg Hansen

• Updated Sep 7, 2022