Francis Marion University athletic officials have announced that
former women's softball Academic All-American Cindy
Alford and a former two-sport standout (women's basketball
and volleyball) on some of the school's first women's athletic
teams, LaRue Fields, will be inducted into the FMU
Athletic Hall of Fame on Saturday, Feb. 15, 1997.
Fields, a native of Effingham and a graduate of
Southside High School, was a member of the first three Lady Patriot
basketball and volleyball teams (1973-1976). She earned the
B.A. degree in sociology in 1976 and currently resides in
Minneapolis, Minn., where she is an advocacy administrator with the
Minneapolis Urban League. In this senior management position,
she is responsible for the general administration and management of
the Policy Advocacy and Community Education Division of the local
organization.
On the basketball court at Francis Marion, she amassed 1,158
career points and 1,186 rebounds, while the Lady Patriots compiled
a three-year record of 50-24. She is one of only four Patriot
cagers to record 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. She still
holds the FMU (male or female) single-game record for rebounds with
32. As a senior, she helped lead Francis Marion to a
sixth-place finish at the AIAW Small College National Tournament in
Ashland, Ohio.
On the volleyball court, she helped the Lady Patriots to a
three-year mark of 45-37. While earning SCAIAW Tournament
All-Tournament honors in 1974, she helped Francis Marion gain a
berth in the AIAW Region II Tournament. She was also a member
of the 1976 Francis Marion women's track and field club team.
Following graduation, Fields served as a graduate assistant
basketball coach for two years at Salisbury State
College. After earning the M.Ed. degree from Salisbury
State, she was named the head women's basketball coach at Morgan
State University in Baltimore, Md. In seven seasons, she
recorded a 123-61 mark and guided the Lady Bears to three 20-win
seasons, five regional tournaments, and two national
tournaments. Following a 24-4 season in 1980-81, she was
named the AIAW Division II national "Coach of the Year."
In 1986, she took the position of assistant coach at the
University of Minnesota and became head coach a year later.
Prior to leaving the university in 1990 to pursue new career
opportunities outside of coaching, she compiled a 24-59 record in
three seasons. In 10 seasons as a college head coach, she
amassed a 147-120 record.
Beginning in 1990, Fields worked for four years with the
Minneapolis YWCA as director of youth services and the Ruth Hawkins
Program Center. She joined the staff of the Urban League in
1994 as director of the Police Community Training Project and the
Minneapolis Curfew/Truancy Center, before taking her current
position in 1996.
She is a member of several Minneapolis area committees and is a
board member for The Bridge for Runaway Youth, the Minneapolis
Municipal Athletic Association, the Minneapolis Police Athletic
League, and the Leadership for Black Women. Fields has also
done some motivational speaking engagements, in addition to
numerous electronic and print media interviews.
