Strength via hope

Sporting News, The, Jan 2, 1995 by Steve Harrison

He was much like her father, close in age and of similar build, except his face was burned badly from an accident. Vivian Stoner, like most kids in town, had seen the scary man, and like most kids she had nightmares about him, because her father worked in the coal mine, too. Not a day passed that Vivian did not pray for her father to come home whole from that awful place, where closed caskets always seemed to surface. This was the Pennsylvania coal-mining town of Edenborn and this is how Vivian Stoner and her five siblings grew up. Shuddering when her father sneezed handkerchiefs black, praying harder when she heard fire sirens wail.

Charles Stoner still went to the mine and his daughter watched and prayed. He even went to work years after both of his legs were amputated above the knee. After a trip to the hospital for frostbite, the doctor found his arteries so thick that they were slowly chocking the circulation in his legs. Vivian watched Dad learn to walk again on two prosthetics, stumbling like a circus clown on stilts, before returning to the mine for the last two years of his life.

Should it be any wonder then that Iowa women's basketball Coach Vivian Stringer is in the midst of her 23rd season coaching? She's still speaking her mind -- nevermind she's an African American woman in a predominately white profession -- because that's what Charles would have done, and that's what her peers have come to expect. Success has become expected, too, despite more than her share of hardship. In 1982, she coached Cheyney State in the NCAA championship game while her baby daughter Janine recovered in the hospital from surgery. In 1992, just as the season was starting, her husband, Bill, died of a heart attack on a Thanksgiving morning.

This is, after all, a woman, who, in complete seriousness, looks you in the eye and says, "I could have been president. I never looked at it as a black or white or man or woman thing. I could have been president because I could get things done."

Getting things done at such a remarkable pace does put you out of touch with the rest of society, however. Take sleeping in the afternoon. "People take naps?" she says, looking confused. "At 1 or 2 in the afternoon?" It's not that Stringer couldn't use a nap. God, does she need it. She just doesn't believe in it. There are actually times her face droops, her voice drops, it seems she inevitably will put her head down on her desk or curl in her car for a bit of sleep, while Xs and O's fall through her mind like tracers.

And while Stringer doesn't sleep in the afternoon, she doesn't sleep at night, either. Two years ago, close friend Temple Coach John Chaney pleaded with her secretary for a daily copy of her schedule. Stringer, Chaney remembers, was running so hard after the death of her husband that she was losing weight. So Chaney held Stringer's schedule on fax, calling Iowa City when it looked like she wasn't leaving enough time for lunch.

The sleepless nights continue. Watch some videotape. Play with Magic Markers, drawing ways to find senior forward Tia Jackson an open jump shot. Smoke a cigarette, which like most things, she does well. At Slippery Rock State College in Slippery Rock, Pa., someone told her she didn't smoke right. Didn't inhale. Didn't look cool. So she paid her friend 50 cents to teach her.

She will do all these things for hours and hours to satisfy her mind, which says to her, "Via, keep going; Via, can't stop now." Then suddenly she will come to an end. As sunrise approaches, she will pick herself up from her chair and face the bedroom, body and mind so limp she couldn't possibly think of anything. Finally, sleep comes, and Stringer gets the rest most take for granted.

Among the things Stringer has always believed in, the most recognizable is her ability to talk tall. A perceived larger presence is at odds with her actual size, of course, because Stringer stands just 5 feet 3 and wears a thin face on a wispy frame. It starts in the mind, she explains, whether it's a firm handshake -- don't dare not squeeze her hand -- or whether a player says "Iowa" with the same pride she might one day speak about her grandchildren. She coined this talking tall business long ago when she would summon her waif-like body to loom as large as a grunting, full-bellied boys coach, the kind of coach hollering, "run, pissants, run."

To talk tall, you must first talk, of course, and Stringer has never had much of a problem doing that. There was the time in college that she went to the president's office and asked why didn't he go to women's field hockey games? Or as basketball coach at Cheyney State when she lobbied tournament directors, asking why wasn't her team invited? Or two years ago, when she asked for and received a salary of $119,049, equal to Iowa men's Coach Tom Davis' salary.

Stringer has done big things in Iowa City, propelling a consistent loser to six Big Ten championships and a Final Four trip in 1993, making her the only women's coach to take two different teams there -- her 1982 Cheyney State team, remember, lost to Louisiana Tech, 76-62, in the championship. Before this season began, she was No. 3 on the active coaching list with 509 victories in 22 years, a winning percentage of .912. This season, she has recruited what pundits have come to call, "The Sensational Seven," which to Stringer doesn't mean a whole lot. She's been known to say, "It doesn't matter what you did in high school if you can't throw a bounce pass, goddurnit," which has been especially prophetic. As of December 20, the Hawkeyes were 4-5, upset winners over Southern Cal, but losers to Creighton, Southwest Missouri State, Stephen F. Austin and UC-Santa Barbara.