Teresa Phillips Comes Full Circle

In more than four decades as a pioneering student-athlete, coach and administrator, Teresa Lawrence Phillips, BA’80, proved adept at taking on new challenges.

At Vanderbilt, she blazed a trail as the university’s first Black female student-athlete. Part of the university’s first varsity women’s basketball team in 1977–78, she helped build the foundation for the SEC championships, Final Four appearances and Memorial Magic that followed.

As a head coach at both Fisk and Tennessee State, she led women’s basketball programs to multiple conference championships and postseason appearances. She was the first woman to serve as head coach in an NCAA Division I men’s basketball game, when she led Tennessee State against Austin Peay on Feb. 13, 2003. She served as Tennessee State’s athletic director for nearly 20 years, not only helping student-athletes but paving the way for a generation of leaders like Candice Lee, the first Black woman to serve as an athletic director in the SEC.

For someone who pushed relentlessly forward throughout her career, retirement in 2020 brought a new challenge that was as welcome as it was unfamiliar: letting the world go by.

“It took somewhat of an emotional, physical, spiritual toll,” Philips chuckled of her decades in collegiate athletics. “You’re ready to sit down for a while.”

She’s still sitting down, at least when the Vanderbilt women’s basketball team takes the court in Memorial Gymnasium. But she never did get the hang of letting the world go by. Phillips is in her first season as the color analyst for women’s basketball radio broadcasts, sitting courtside for home games alongside play-by-play announcer Jake Lyman.

For a member of the Vanderbilt Hall of Fame, broadcasting the Commodores brings her basketball life full circle and offers one more new challenge in the sport she loves most. And as the yearlong celebration of Title IX’s 50th anniversary recedes, hers remains an important voice in the conversation about progress that is still possible and necessary.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: After so many years as a coach, how different is preparing to call a game on the radio? 

Initially, I went to practice several times a week to get a feel for the personnel, see who was whom and where their strengths lie. I would watch the coaching and what type of philosophy Coach Ralph and her staff have with the student-athletes. I’m a season ticket holder, so I did make some of the games over the last few years, but, obviously, you don’t really get the inside feel for what a team is attempting to do.

Before SEC play, from game to game, I did a little more research on the other team—find out interesting things about them, their coach, what they’ve been doing over the last few years. Any little tidbit that can tie conversation in while Jake is doing the play-by-play. I’m really with a professional. He is so dang-gone good, I just look at him sometimes like ‘How do you know all of this stuff and just spit it out?’

I’m a rookie at this, so it’s been interesting trying to learn how he does things and just be an asset to the broadcasts—because he really doesn’t need any help.

Q: Can you turn off the competitiveness that you’ve always had around basketball?

A: I used to be so nervous before a game. All the way up to the tip off, as a player, I’d be sick to my stomach almost. But from when the ball went up until the game was over, I was never nervous. Now, I was always a nervous wreck watching the game. As an athletic director for all those years, I almost couldn’t watch my teams play. And so I didn’t know what would happen with me doing this job. But I find I’m very laid back, very comfortable. I’m not nervous at all.

To be honest, I was more worried about me being such a fan and maybe saying something inappropriate—that I would just spit out one of those words that you’re not supposed to say because I want Vandy to win so badly. I had to hold my peace a couple of times, so that has been interesting. But it’s just the professionalism that you have to get yourself wired to.

Q: As a coach and administrator, you spent your career communicating. Was it a challenge finding your radio voice and how you want to communicate with listeners?

A: I’m not sure that I’ve found that voice yet. I hope that I’ve grown into that by the end of this season. I think I’ve already made a few subtle changes from when I started. I realized that if there’s nothing to say, you don’t have to say anything. Also that you have to be prepared to say something when the play-by-play individual needs a break or is at a point where he or she wouldn’t be sure what to say. Those are things I can clean up and be more productive with during our broadcasts. But mostly, I think a color person needs to do that—be able to bring some color to the broadcast. Yes, analyze and talk about what the teams are doing, some X’s and O’s, but also bring things of interest that your fan base would like to know about.

Q: You mentioned observing the coaching staff. Having known of Shea Ralph from afar for so many years, what stood out when you were able to speak with her and observe her coaching up close? 

A: One of the things that she said earlier this season that I love is the idea of “playing to the standard of Vanderbilt women’s basketball.” We’ve had some really successful runs at Vanderbilt under several of our coaches, but she inherited us at perhaps a down time. We may not be at that standard that we expect, but that is still what she expects.

When someone sets a bar for you, you understand what you are being measured by and what your goal is. That is awesome for her to tell these young ladies, as well as our recruits that we just signed and any future players — there’s a standard. I love that about Coach Ralph and the energy she brought. I love that is what she’s coming in with. She’s not making any excuses. We still have to play to the standard of Vanderbilt women’s basketball, which means we’re always going to go out and give our level best. We’re going to recruit and bring in top players, so that our level best will be in the top echelon of women’s basketball. We’re going to be vying for championships eventually.

She fits into the Vanderbilt mold. She comes from a program where the student, the athlete, the academics—the expectations to be at the top in all of those categories are there. And that’s the kind of young women that we want to have come to Vanderbilt women’s basketball.

Q: In terms of that sense of historical legacy and setting a standard, your generation paved the way for Shea’s generation to then change the sport for the student-athletes competing today. What do you hope women’s basketball student-athletes know about that history?

A: I’ve been going around with Mary Ellen Pethel, a professor at Belmont who just wrote Title IX, Pat Summitt and Tennessee’s Trailblazers: 50 Years, 50 Stories. We’re trying to give that history lesson, particularly to young women student-athletes, for them to understand that ‘Hey, you don’t owe us anything, but there were some flagbearers who went before you.’

There were people who played for the love of playing without ever flying on a plane, much less a charter plane. People who never sat on a leather couch in a locker room and were lucky to have the one uniform they had. And they were in love with and played for the joy of playing.

Now, today’s student-athletes are in a different situation. There’s a lot of money and resources and investment being put in. And sometimes it changes that simple joy you had because there’s a lot of pressure. You have cameras, you are on the radio, you are on the SEC Network. There is a lot on the line. But you can’t forget that there has to be some sense that there are bigger things than you about this whole gig. Especially in the case of women, we didn’t always have this opportunity. There were people who really stuck their neck out to get it. So it’s important to appreciate what you have.

You don’t owe anybody anything except for making good on what is happening in today’s game for women.

Q: When you were in the moment, competing at Vanderbilt, did you feel fulfilled or was there always an awareness of not being on equal footing?

A: I felt fulfilled. I came from a great family, but a relatively low income family. Great people, people with high standards and no excuse making. But I wasn’t looking for all of that. At that time, most of the women’s programs didn’t have all of that. Smaller schools like Delta State and Immaculata were the top women’s programs in the nation. The bigger schools were still trying to dodge this new thing called Title IX.

You have to see it sometimes to really believe and want it. The 1976 Olympics had just happened with a lot more women doing things—women’s basketball had played their first Olympics. So I hadn’t seen that much to say, ‘Wow, we’re being cheated.’ I think the female athletes in the last 10 or 15 years have said that a lot more than back when I was playing at Vanderbilt. We were just happy to get the opportunity to play. We were not as worried about looking over and seeing what the men’s program had and what they were doing. Because [the inequality] just wasn’t that abnormal at the time, I hate to say it.

I enjoyed my experience, and to be honest, now that I’ve had other experiences, I still will say those were some of my best experiences in my life.

Q:  Women’s basketball became a varsity sport your sophomore year. Was the idea of helping to create something new part of the appeal of Vanderbilt to you coming from Chattanooga?

It’s very interesting that when you’re in something—even if it’s not history making, but whatever you want to call it—you’re not really aware of it. You’re 18 or 19, and it’s not a big deal to do whatever it is you do. You’re not putting up the flag for the women coming behind you. You’re doing the best you can do, living your life and enjoying what it is you like to do.

Yes, you do make some sacrifices. And yes, you do go through some things. And because you went through them, it’s easier for that next generation. You go and speak to the AD and maybe the next person won’t have to do it that way. They might give you a warm-up or carve out a better locker room, where the PE classes aren’t coming in and dressing at the same time as you’re getting ready for a game—that happened to us.

You’re just trying to make a way and make things better for you and your teammates.

Q: So when did you gain an appreciation for the role your generation played in setting a standard?

When I decided not to use that great Vanderbilt degree and foolishly went back into sports — my mom thought I was crazy and my dad wasn’t sure—my role became to try to help some kids make it. And that’s what I did at Tennessee State for 30 years. Try to help kids. A lot of them are first-generation kids, a lot of them with less than what we probably should have been giving. That became my purpose in life, maybe without me planning it.

Every generation should be setting a pace—I hope we’re not turning this corner where we’re going backwards with the next generation being worse off than the last generation.

Up until and through my generation, you were always going to do better than the previous generation. Everything was going forward. And because I’ve worked with young people all my life, sometimes I worry if they are going to be better off than their parents were. Are they going to have better and more opportunities? I even look at race in this country, and I feel like sometimes what I dreamt about at 18 when I left Chattanooga and came up here to Vanderbilt, that we’ve gone backwards in some ways.

I talk to people about Title IX and how much women have advanced. But I tell people let’s be very careful because that law alone will not help us continue to advance. Only people respecting each other and believing in the value of women and women’s sports will keep us advancing. We’re not going to automatically advance because we think that’s just what is supposed to happen.

Q: Knowing Candice Lee as well as you do, what does her role at the university signal about the potential to continue advancing? 

A: She is very smart, very savvy, so approachable, so relationship oriented—in a job where it is hard to do that because you have a whole lot to deal with, and it’s hard to stop and try to speak to everybody while you’re walking through the building.

To see what is being developed with Vandy United, that’s huge—it’s a big step for Vanderbilt, where there have always been questions about funding and facilities. Are we willing to make the commitment to having athletics on the level with the rest of the folks in our conference and across the country? Now, taking that turn and seeing the direction that she and the chancellor are headed, if you had told me that’s where we would be, I wouldn’t have believed it.