Photo by Mike Lamb Southwest Minnesota State University Women's basketball coach Tom Webb delivers a motivational speech to the graduates of the Marshall Leadership Academy

Not every great coach had great playing careers. In fact, some were better players in a different sport that the sport they ended up coaching in.

Take former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick. He was a better lacrosse player than a football player. He did become a sub-par offensive NFL lineman. But he will be forever known as one of the winningest coaches in NFL history.

Former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was considered a terrible Major League pitcher before becoming one of the more famous baseball managers.

Those two coaching icons came to mind after listening to Southwest Minnesota State University women’s basketball coach Tom Webb. He was the keynote speaker at the Marshall Leadership Academy graduation day held at the Marshall Golf Course last week.

The academy is sponsored by the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce and designed to build community leaders. And as we all know, leaders want to know how to motivate the people they lead.

And Webb offered some good insight on the subject.

“People don’t follow titles,” Webb told the graduates. “Everyone thinks as a young leader, I have this title. That means nothing. What do they follow? They follow energy. They follow consistency. It’s important if I bring energy to practice, they have no choice than to play harder. It’s not an option. If the 50-year-old has more energy than the 18-year-old, we have issues.”

Webb also told the graduates that he’s been “fortunate, blessed” with his recruitment.

“We make it very clear in the recruiting process, we make it very clear in the recruiting process, this is who we are. What don’t we do? We don’t do lazy. We don’t do moody. We don’t skip class. We are not bad teammates. It’s easy enough to make it clear now, we don’t always get every recruit. There’s a reason, and that’s OK with me.”

Wells also talked about setting the tone in “your organization.”

“You’re the leader. You set the tone. It’s very important to understand that we got standards,” he said.

As he paced from one side to the other in front of the graduates, he talked about his energy.

“So, first of all, if you been around me much, I always say this to all the recruits — the recruits, parents, everyone I meet — this is who I’m every single day.”

Apparently, Webb’s standards for the women’s players are a little different from the men under head coach Brad Bigler. He shared the story about years ago when the two teams had to share one team bus on game trips.

“Brad is really laid back. And they have certain things in their system,” Webb said. “We have what we call Mustang time — five minutes early, no matter what. Non-negotiable. Does not matter. I do not care. If the bus is leaving at eight, we have our kids on the bus ready to go. I would roll up probably at 7:55. Brad’s kids are here and there. That wasn’t important. That wasn’t a big deal. That’s how they function. We function in another way. But it was very clear how we function. There’s all the things they (men’s team) are strict on, that we’re not strict on. But understand, you have to define what your standards are.”

Webb also talked about one of his key players on the 2025-26 team that finished 17-12 and finished fifth in the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. Audrey Swanson averaged 18 points a game last season.

“In her first two years she never played. Her third year — all-world. ‘What the hell were you doing coach?’ She’s amazing, right? First team all-league, back-to-back years. Scores 1,000 points in two years. Know who looks dumb? Me. You can argue that.

“But she got it. She kept going and going. Why? Because she felt seen. The coach was honest with her. Made it very clear what she needed to work on. I didn’t sugarcoat anything.”

Webb said Swanson had this superpower for rebounding.

Webb also talked about one of his former star players who finished her SMSU basketball career in the 2024-25 season. Bri Stotzman led SMSU in scoring in 2023-24 with 579 points and 703 points in 2024-25. She averaged 22 points a game in 2024-25.

“I remember instantly, her sophomore year, brought her in. I said, Bri, this ball is yours. Remember the importance that comes with that ball,” he said. “She always thought about the team. Now, she demanded excellence from her team and she would jump you in practice if you didn’t go hard.”

Webb said Stotzman was difficult to coach because she was smart, stubborn an d competitive.

“She was hard to coach. The best are. You think Kobe (Bryant) was easy to coach? Tom Brady easy to coach? Because they care. It matters.”

I had never met Coach Webb before his motivational speech to the graduates. But something he said during his speech got me thinking about the coaches like Belichick and Lasorda. He revealed he started coaching at age 24 and coached athletes who were age 21.

So I asked him about his career.

“I went to Southwest. A guy named Kelly Kruger asked if I could practice. I was redshirting for the baseball team. He asked if I would be a practice player. And it just kind of grew from there,” he said.

Webb said he didn’t play much on the SMSU baseball team. He did play basketball in high school, but wasn’t good enough to play in college.

“I always loved it and been around it,” he said of sports. “And then coach asked me to help and the next thing you know, you find yourself coaching at camp and then you’re coaching as a school assistant and then just kind of go from there.”

Webb has established a pretty good coaching resume thus far.

He was an assistant coach at Northern State 1999-2000, head coach at Northwest College 2000-04. He spent time at Eastern College as an assistant coach and associate head coach before heading to Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma as head coach. The team only won eight games combined the prior two seasons before his hire, but he went on to record a 91-123 record from 2008 to 2016.

He led Cameron to an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament in 2014-15.

Webb took over the SMSU program in 2016. You can say his first two years were lean with three wins the first season and five wins the second. However, the program has grown over the years, peaking to a 28-5 record in 2024-25 and reaching the third round of the Division II NCAA tournament.

He has also coached four players who went on to play professionally and four are Olympians.

Webb made it “very clear’ to his audience that he has his eyes on the ball. And so does his team.

“We made it very clear form day one. Where we want to be, what we’re trying to do. Really simple. Yes, we’re going to chase down a national championship,” he said. “That’s something we want to do. But more importantly, we’re going to build great people. And if we do that, we’ll be in good shape.”

Sounds simple enough, coach. And “very clear.”

— Mike Lamb is editor of the Marshall Independent