In a state that has had its fair share of great women’s basketball players, perhaps no one captured the imagination or gained more notoriety than Litsch. She won championships, set records and pushed women’s basketball to headline status across the state. At Thomas High School, Litsch-led teams went a combined 77-9 from 1978-1981, winning two six-on-six state titles on the way. Her 3,364 total points was at the time the most ever points scored by any player (boy or girl) in Oklahoma high school history. She still holds the state tournament career scoring record of 37.6 points per game. Litsch, a 4.0 valedictorian, had her choice of any school in the country, including basketball powers Texas, Southern California and Louisiana Tech. She opted to stay nearby and enrolled at Southwestern. What followed can only be described as “Hoops Hysteria,” as the Lady Bulldogs exploded into the NAIA’s premier basketball program. In Litsch’s first year, she led SWOSU to an undefeated 34-0 season.
As a freshman, she earned MVP Tournament Honors and was named First Team NAIA All-American. More championships followed in 1983 and again in 1985. In her last game as a senior, she hit the game-winning jumper in the closing seconds to defeat Saginaw Valley, Mich. 54-43. She became the first NAIA player to be selected to the first team All-American squad four times. Litsch ended her magical run at SWOSU with a 129-5 record and as the NAIA all-time record holder in points scored with 2,700.
After graduation, she joined the Lady Bulldogs basketball program as an assistant coach and helped them to their fourth and fifth titles 1987 and 1990. Litsch traded in her coach’s whistle in 1995 and began concentrating on the administrative end. She served as the assistant athletic director in charge of compliance at Southwestern until 2014. She has been inducted into five Hall Of Fames: SWOSU Athletic (1990), NAIA Hall of Fame (1991), Oklahoma Sports (2004), Women’s Basketball (2005) and the Dewey County Hall of Fame (2013).
Kelli Litsch Retirement Series, Part 1: The Player:
By Jeff Barron, Weatherford Daily News
The Southwestern teams won more championships in 1983 and again in 1985 with Litsch in tow. She became the first NAIA player in any sport to be selected to the first team All-American squad all four seasons. Litsch ended her four-year run at SWOSU with a 129-5 record and as the NAIA all-time record holder in points scored with 2,700.
Former "Voice of the Bulldogs" Chuck Edwards was there when Litsch hit the game-winning shot and covered her career as a player and a coach.
"When the season started we had no idea it was going to mushroom like it did, so we weren't even broadcasting women's basketball," Edwards said. "Women's basketball in the past had been played in the afternoon to an empty house. They jumped out to a 10-0, 11-0 start and then we jumped on the band wagon. It was just amazing. The gym started to fill up and there were more people in the stands for the women's game than we did for the men's game. It was real exciting. We never envisioned the year we were going to have. "Kelli was an exciting player to watch," said Edwards. "Kelli elevated the play of the other players. They played better because of her. She was Kevin Durant before Kevin Durant was even born."
Teammates enjoyed playing with her as well. "I didn't know how my role was going to be after hearing about how awesome she was," said Vickie Roop. "Kelli was the epitome of the word teammate. She was not a boaster, not a celebrator and on the court she was always the person who made you feel you were the star on the floor. She never took that role. She was quiet, she was reserved, but when the ball hit her hand, she was the most exciting thing to watch on the floor."
Litsch helped bring prominence to the program and put it on the national stage. Sports Illustrated even profiled her in their magazine one year. She set the standard of what it was like to be a Lady Bulldog.
Kelli Litsch Retirement Series, Part 2: The Coach
By Jeff Barron, Weatherford Daily NewsFor those around Western Oklahoma, the name says it all - player, coach, legend.
In the 1980's there were not many opportunities for the best female athletes in the country to showcase their abilities after college. There was no WNBA or the equivalent. If there was, Litsch would have no doubt been one of the top players. Because there were no opportunities, Litsch decided to stay at SWOSU and become an assistant coach under John Loftin.
Loftin and Litsch were a great recruiting team as Litsch focused on high school recruiting, while Loftin handled the junior college ranks. Valerie Fariss is the second all-time leading scorer in SWOSU history - Litsch is number one - and she was recruited to be a Lady Bulldog by Litsch.
"Well, It's one of those deals that - I was from Leedey, small school, she was from Fay; both in Dewey County. Barely, but she was from the same county. The first time I ever heard of her I was in the fifth grade," Fariss said. "My parents they're good friends and they just loved basketball and going to watch a good ball game. "They supported Leedey, but anybody that was playing. Well they had heard of Kelli Litsch. It was just a scrimmage, because we would never have played them in the regular season because they were Class A. We go to the scrimmage and that was the first time I ever saw her play. That was my hero. It started then."
Fariss said she was probably the easiest recruit SWOSU ever had. "When the recruiting process started, I was a pretty easy recruit, let me tell you," Fariss said. "When you grow up and you've got three heroes - you've got Johnny Bench 'til I had to retire when I turned the seventh grade. Mom wouldn't let me play baseball anymore; Kelli Litsch and Flo Hyman, she was a volleyball player. In fact, she was an Olympian. So the recruiting process was not that difficult."
Despite the fact, Litsch was her hero and was recruiting Fariss to come to SWOSU it was also the top women's program in the state. Mostly because of Loftin and Litsch.
"When she and Coach Loftin came to recruit, I think they had lost two home games since '81," Fariss said. "This was in '89-'90 when they were recruiting me and there was just nowhere in the state of Oklahoma that was any better. You have this perception of a person that's your hero and then you get to come and play for them and there's no disappointment there. There's a lot of people that you looked up to and then when you kind of get to know them you find out it's not all exactly what they're cracked up to be. That's not the case with Kelli Litsch. She is what she is. She was a great hero, she was a great coach and was a great mentor to us."
One of the things that made her a good coach was also one of the things that made her a leader as a player. She led by example. While Loftin was a fiery coach, who at times liked to yell, Litsch was just the opposite in that she was the counterbalance who could be the calming influence for a player.
"She was a great combination for coach Loftin," Fariss said. "As I got into coaching and looked back, I enjoyed the things that Bobby Knight would teach - the old school - I'm real old school so I read a lot of his books and I played for - we all did - we played for Bobby Knight on the female side of things as far as coach Loftin went and Kelli was the person who came back behind and picked you up. They were just a good fit as far as the coaching part of it, it was a very good fit."
It was such a good fit that the Lady Bulldogs went 278-49 in Litsch's 10 years on the bench. In that same time period the team won their fourth and fifth NAIA National Championships in 1987 and 1990.
Fariss went on to say that both Litsch and Loftin were big influences in her decision to become a high school coach. Others noted how her relationship with Loftin as a player benefited the team such as Judy Pyron who became friends with Litsch when she attended SWOSU.
"Kelli was a very humble and quiet player," said Judy Pyron. "Now when she became assistant coach with John Loftin that began to change a little bit. She was a little more fired up. Of course she had to remain calm because John was always so fired up. There had to be a little bit of sanity among the players."
Vicki Hatton said the passion for basketball carried over into how Litsch conducted herself as an educator.
"The impact that she had on students, caring about students, whether it was a student-athlete coming in and helping them out or just a student in general, she was always had an open door policy to help them in any way she could," Hatton said. "She was just one of those that the students always liked and in her classes you were guaranteed you were going to learn something because she knew how to get the material across to the kids. She was great in that respect."
With all the success she found on the court as both a player and a coach and being part of five national championships, eventually it was time to move on and try her hand at something else.
After 10 years on the sideline she made the move to administration side as the associate athletic director in charge of compliance when the school made the move from the NAIA to NCAA Division II and just like her playing and coaching days she was a success there as well.
"We all know her for basketball, but she's so much more," Pyron said.
Kelli Litsch Retirement Series, Part 3: The Administrator
By Jeff Barron, Weatherford Daily NewsAfter a hall of fame career as a player and a successful run as an assistant coach at your alma mater, what is the next step for a SWOSU legend? Administrator. Litsch turned in her coaching whistle in 1995 and took on the challenge of an administrator as she became the compliance coordinator at SWOSU as the university made the transition from the NAIA to Division I. "When we first transitioned about 1995 - 1996 during that time. All of our so-called rivals - Southeastern, East Central, Northeastern, UCO - they were all transitioning into NCAA Division II and we felt like it was something we needed to look at too," Litsch said. "For scheduling purposes, for rivalry purposes. We had a conference, the Lone Star Conference, at that time, they were looking to expand and so the timing was right." Because of the move to the NCAA, the administration needed to hire a full-time compliance coordinator. One of the restrictions was there had to be a senior female administrator, so it made sense that Litsch would move into that position. "I had always in the back of my mind felt like athletics administration was what I wanted to do," Litsch said. "I felt like coaching was the easiest way to get there." Litsch said after being assistant women's basketball coach for 10 years and the move to the NCAA that the timing was right for her to make the move out of coaching and into administration. "When I got into compliance, I didn't have a whole lot of guidance," Litsch said. "I went to a couple of schools - I made a trip to UCO, I made a trip to Cameron - just to kind of get an idea of how they went about things and then just jumped right in going to NCAA meetings and basically started the compliance program myself in '96 the very beginning." As director of compliance, Litsch had to wade through an infinite number of rules and regulations and proceed to make sure the multitude of coaches and athletes followed those rules, which sometimes meant telling a coach "no". "(It's) probably not the best feeling for me to say no all the time, but yet I always felt like in my role in the NCAA integrity was the critical piece," Litsch said. "I can't waiver. It's either right or it's wrong and there's really not a lot of grey area. Because of that and because I made a commitment that was the path I was going to go down, I learned to do it much easier." As the only compliance coordinator in the school's history. Litsch knows the ins and outs and coaches know if they have a question, they can go to her and ask. Now they will turn to Todd Helton, who has taken a similar career path to Litsch. Helton was an All-American football player for the Bulldogs and moved into the coaching ranks at SWOSU after graduation and now has been tabbed as Litsch's replacement as the compliance officer. Helton came to SWOSU in 1986, a year after Litsch had finished her playing career, but he knew about her accomplishments. "I never got to see her play, but I definitely saw her. Anytime you see someone who was a four-time All-American and the record they had, the number of national championships they won, it was very impressive." When Helton transitioned to coaching and SWOSU moved to the ranks of Division II, he began to have more dealings with Litsch. "When I got hired on, Kelli was still in the Kinesiology department, still teaching and all that, so she kind of showed me the ropes as far as wellness class and understanding how to teach some of my classes," Helton said. "If I had a question on any of that stuff, I always went to Kelli. I started out assisting her in those wellness classes so I've been with her since the start. When we went from NAIA and transitioned into the NCAA II, it was a big change from the NAIA as far as recruiting. Kelli did a great job of getting everybody on board and being the bearer of bad news a lot of times, but we always respected her decisions and no one ever thought about bucking the trend. She was the authority and made a seamless transition for us." Helton enjoyed working with Litsch for many years and respected the type of person she was. "The biggest thing about Kelli, to me is how humble she is," Helton said. "Kelli is the probably the greatest women's basketball player in the history of the state of Oklahoma, that's the bottom line if you really think about it, but you would never know that by talking to Kelli. She doesn't talk about it, she doesn't toot her own horn. But I was brought up kind of the same way. If you're good, people are going to tell you and talk about it, you don't have to say a word. That's obviously the case with Kelli." Helton will now take over as the assistant athletic director in charge of compliance. "I'm going to have her on speed dial, calling her all the time" Helton said about taking over for Litsch. "Hopefully she doesn't leave the state. I'm kind of starting out right now with Kelli and she's kind of training me. There's a lot of information, a lot of things. I know she's been doing it for awhile and she has it down. She calms me down and tells me how easy it is. At this point my head is kind of spinning on a couple of things. I appreciate all Kelli's done and helped me to get settled in to the job and I just hope I can do half the job she's done."
Kelli Litsch Retirement Series, Part 4: The Hall of Famer
By Jeff Barron, Weatherford Daily NewsFive. The career of Kelli Litsch is encapsulated by one number - five. Litsch won five national championships - three as a player and two as an assistant coach - at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She has also been inducted into five Hall of Fames, including the Southwestern Oklahoma State University Hall of Fame (1990), NAIA Hall of Fame (1991), Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame (2004), Women's Basketball Hall of Fame (2005) and the Dewey County Hall of Fame (2013). The accolades are well deserved after a college career which included five championships, a 129-5 record and over 2,000 points. Chuck Edwards, former voice of the Bulldogs, knew there was something special while watching Litsch play. "The ultimate at that time was just being an All-American and she was a four-time All-American," Edwards said. "I didn't really think about Hall of Fame, but in retrospect, yeah, she was a Hall of Fame player. People always ask me who the best athlete I ever saw play and I would always say Kelli Litsch. I would say, 'I'm not comparing women to men', I'm just saying Kelli Litsch was the best athlete I ever saw because she elevated her teammates. She made her teammates play better because of her play." Five years after her coaching career she received her first hall of fame call. It came from her alma mater - SWOSU. It was a class that included Robert Henry, Orville Long and Travis Rhodes. Henry played both basketball and baseball for the Bulldogs in the late 40's and early 50's before signing with the Chicago Cubs and playing at the Triple A level. Long was a three-sport athlete at SWOSU playing baseball, football and also wrestled. Rhodes played football and basketball at SWOSU. "I think anytime you're part of a team sport when the team has success there's obviously going to be individual awards that go along with it and I always say whenever I talk about some of the teams I played on, I played on some great teams, I had some wonderful teammates," Litsch said. "That first year - a very unique situation - nobody was here, it was a new program, a new coach, we didn't know each other. You throw together roughly 15 people into a team that have no history together with a coach we didn't know and mix us all together and at the end of the year we're 34-0 and national champs. I mean you just don't hear of stories like that very often. It was just one of those unbelievable things." Litsch echoed the same sentiment Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman mentioned when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in which he said he felt uncomfortable accepting an individual award for a team sport. "I think that's very real," Litsch said. "With what we accomplished those four years that I was a member of the team. It was a total team (effort). Everything we did was about the team and I was just one part of a very successful four years." The call for the NAIA Hall of Fame followed a year after the SWOSU Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame ceremony was in 2004. "The Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame that was kind of a dream come true because if you look at the people that have been inducted into that and at the time I went in there were only two other women in the entire hall of fame and like 70-something men," Litsch said. "So that was an unbelievable honor. Since then there have been some additional. There's still less than five in the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. That's something that I'm very proud of, not to mention the fact that Karen Knight, who was a very good friend of mine when she was Karen Edgar and the head girls basketball coach at Lomega and then eventually married Bobby Knight, she was the person who inducted me. She gave the induction speech." Bobby was still the coach at Texas Tech when Litsch was inducted and Karen came in from Lubbock for the ceremony. "It was very meaningful to me that she took time out of her schedule to come back to Oklahoma and do that for me," Litsch said. "That was very special." Next came the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005, which is housed on the campus of the University of Tennessee and boasts names like Pat Summitt - longtime Tennessee head coach, C. Vivian Stringer - head coach at Rutgers and Kim Mulkey - Baylor head coach. "The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tennessee is just it if you're a women's basketball fan," Litsch said. "I got to spend the weekend there and meet people that I've just idolized my entire life and spend the weekend at various events with some of my heroes. That was something that I'll cherish forever." For one of the best players to come out of Oklahoma the career has come to an end as Litsch celebrated her retirement. So from Fay, Oklahoma to SWOSU and eventually five different hall of fames, she now will begin a new chapter of her life.
