The late, great Coach Margaret Wade
The most important hire in the history of Delta State athletics went to a 60-year-old instructor who had been out of coaching for more than a decade. It produced three national championships, a 51-game winning streak, and a trophy that still carries her name.
Lily Margaret Wade was born Dec. 30, 1912, in McCool, Mississippi, a small town in Webster County. She came to Delta State as a student and played three years of basketball there — earning all-conference honors each season, plus a tennis championship in 1932 and Best Female Athlete in 1932 — before the administration disbanded the program, deciding the sport was too strenuous for girls. She graduated in 1933.
“Losing the program was hard since basketball had been a major part of my life during my youth,” she said later.
She didn’t leave the game. Wade coached at Marietta, Belden and Cleveland High Schools, spending 19 seasons at Cleveland High, where she compiled a 453-89 record. Her teams won Bolivar County championships 14 times in 15 years. In 1959 she returned to her alma mater as head of the women’s physical education department, and for the next decade-plus the sport she loved sat dormant at Delta State.
The resurrection
Title IX changed the arithmetic. In 1973 Delta State brought women’s basketball back after a 41-year absence and handed the program to Wade.
Her first team went 16-2. Then the dynasty arrived:
| Season | Record | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1973-74 | 16-2 | — |
| 1974-75 | 28-0 | AIAW National Champions |
| 1975-76 | 33-1 | AIAW National Champions |
| 1976-77 | 32-3 | AIAW National Champions |
| 1977-78 | 27-5 | — |
| 1978-79 | 21-12 | — |
| Total | 157-23 | three national titles |
That’s 109-6 over her first four seasons — a .947 winning percentage — and a 93-4 record across the three championship years, including a 51-game winning streak from 1975 to 1977.
Her winning percentage of .872 at Delta State remains among the best in the history of the sport.
The three finals
The AIAW tournament was the national championship of women’s college basketball before the NCAA took over, and Wade’s Lady Statesmen owned it.
1975 — Delta State 90, Immaculata 81 in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Immaculata was the Philadelphia powerhouse that had defined the early years of the women’s game. Delta State went undefeated and beat them for the title. It was the program’s first national championship — and the win that gave a small Mississippi school national credibility.
1976 — Delta State 90, Immaculata 69 in State College, Pennsylvania. A rematch, and a rout. Delta State finished 33-1.
1977 — Delta State 68, LSU 55 in Minneapolis. The final championship, over an SEC opponent, capping a 32-3 season. Tennessee finished third in that tournament.
A legacy with her name on it
In 1978, the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association established the Wade Trophy, named in her honor and awarded annually to the top women’s collegiate player. Wade presented the first one herself, to Montclair State guard Carol Blazejowski. The award endures as one of the sport’s highest individual honors.
In 1986 — eleven years before the WNBA’s founding, and fifteen years before the WBCA Hall of Fame’s first class — the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, inducted Wade as its first woman and first women’s coach. (The Hall lists her enshrinement year as 1985, and other sources as 1986; the Hall’s own record reads 1985.) She was also inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1975, the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Delta State University Hall of Fame.
She was named AIAW National Coach of the Year, and in 1977 earned Kellogg’s National Coach of the Year honors.
Wade retired after the 1978-79 season. Lloyd Clark took over and won three more national titles in 1989, 1990 and 1992 — building on the foundation she laid. The court in Walter Sillers Coliseum now bears Clark’s name.
The statue
On Nov. 12, 2014, Delta State dedicated a statue of Margaret Wade on campus, honoring the coach who put the program and the university on the national map. The dedication came nearly two decades after her death.
Lily Margaret Wade died Feb. 16, 1995. The Hall of Fame’s record lists that date; Delta State’s own materials have at times given February 12. She was 82.
What she left behind: six national championship banners hanging in Walter Sillers Coliseum, the first three of them hers. A program that became the only women’s basketball program in NCAA Division II to reach 1,000 wins — now at 1,181-333-3. And a trophy, still awarded every spring, to the best player in the country.
She also left a line in the record book that says everything about the timing of it. Margaret Wade was 60 years old when Delta State handed her the job.