Van Goor To Be Inducted Into Pac-12 Hall On Friday
March 15, 2019 | Women's Basketball, Alumni C Club, Neill Woelk
LAS VEGAS — When Lisa Van Goor received notification that she would be inducted into the Pac-12 Hall of Honor as part of the 2019 class, the former Colorado great said she was at first taken aback.
"To be honest, I wasn't sure I belonged in that group," said Van Goor, still one of the greatest basketball players ever to wear a Colorado uniform. "It's an amazing bunch of athletes."
But the honor didn't really sink in until last week, when she was watching the Colorado women play in the Pac-12 tournament on television. Across the bottom of the screen came a scroll, announcing this year's Hall of Honor class.
There was the proof.
"I saw my name roll across the bottom and I said to myself, 'This can't be,'" Van Goor said with a laugh. "It was kind of unreal."
But despite Van Goor's protestations, there is little doubt she belongs in the Pac-12 hall. Still the only player in CU history — man or woman — to score 2,000 points and grab 1,000 rebounds, she brought star power to the program in its early years, setting the foundation for a Colorado women's program that would later become a perennial power in the Big Eight and then Big 12.
Van Goor will join a 2019 Hall of Honor class that includes coaches and star athletes from six different sports. It includes basketball stars Ann Meyers Drysdale (UCLA) and Bev Smith (Oregon), along with former Arizona State football coach Frank Kush, track standouts Meg Ritchie-Stone (Arizona) and Dick Fosbury (Oregon State), football standouts Ronnie Lott (USC) and Steve Smith (Utah), swimmer Natalie Coughlin (Cal), baseball player John Olerud (Washington State), tennis player Patricia Bostrom (Washington) and tennis coach Dick Gould (Stanford).
"Ann Meyers was somebody I looked up to when I started playing," Van Goor said of one of the game's pioneers (and still the only woman ever to sign an NBA contract). "Ann was a big-time star. She was a role model for us. … She gave us all hope that there was a future in women's basketball. Bev Smith, I played against when she was at Oregon. When she was on the Canadian National Team, I got to play against her when I represented the United States."
But Van Goor established her own stardom at Colorado. She led CU to the AIAW playoffs her first year in Boulder under head coach Sox Walseth, and was an annual candidate for the NCAA Player of the Year. She also earned All-Big Eight honors in 1983 (the first year for CU's women's program in the conference), and was a three-time U.S. National Team member.
When she graduated, she was CU's all-time leader in scoring, rebounds and blocked shots, and was inducted into the University of Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame in 1999 in the second class to be enshrined (and the first female athlete).
She still treasures her time as a player in Boulder, learning first under Walseth, then Ceal Barry. She called her favorite memory as a Buff, "just playing at the Coors Events Center, how special this university is and how cool it was to play on this court and never lose a home game for three years. That's what was the most special about playing at this university."
Walseth, whose name adorns the court the CU Events Center, had a big influence on her career.
"He was the glue that kept my teammates together and kept my teammates coming back every single year," she said. "We had such a close-knit team, and it was because of Sox. He let us have fun. Basketball was a lot of fun, playing for Sox, that's for sure. Very entertaining."
Barry, now CU's Deputy Athletic Director, nominated Van Goor for the Hall of Honor.
"I'm surprised that I was the first woman (from Colorado)," Van Goor said. "There's been so many great women athletes at CU. I thought maybe down the road, maybe — but Ceal made a comment to me, 'I wanted to do it when you were still able to walk up to the stage and accept the award.' It's really an honor to have a Hall of Fame coach like Ceal Barry nominate me."
Van Goor and her fellow honorees will be formally inducted Friday night during a ceremony prior to the first semifinal game of the Pac-12 men's tournament between Colorado and Washington at T-Mobile Arena. The class will then be honored and introduced to the crowd during a halftime ceremony.
Contact: Neill.Woelk@Colorado.edu