Podcast Ep. 103: March Madness: Carolyn Peck, Stephanie White and Ukari Figgs Reflect on the 25th Anniversary of Purdue Winning the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship

Carolyn Peck:

This is Coach Carolyn Peck, and you are listening to This is Purdue.

Stephanie White:

This is Stephanie White, and you’re listening to This is Purdue.

Ukari Figgs:

This is Ukari Figgs and you’re listening to, this is Purdue.

Kate Young:

Hi. I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same.

Basketball Announcer:

Ladies and gentlemen, the National Champion team resides in West Lafayette, Indiana. As Katie does it, throws the ball skyward, it’s over. Purdue wins 62 to 45 capturing the national championship.

Carolyn Peck:

Well, you want the real story?

Kate Young:

Hi, This is Purdue listeners. I’m so glad you all joined us because in this episode, we are celebrating. What are we celebrating? Well, that audio at the beginning of this episode gave you a big hint. This March Madness, we’re reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the legendary 1998-1999 Purdue Women’s Basketball Team Championship win. This team had a 34 and 1 record, and this team became the first and only Big 10 conference women’s team to win an NCAA national championship.

So to help us celebrate, we’re talking to several members of this iconic team, former head coach Carolyn Peck and co-captain Stephanie White and Ukari Figgs. These three women share more about this historic season and the real story behind what happened once they got to San Jose, California for the final four. This season kicked off with this Boilermaker team beating number one ranked and three-time defending national champion, Tennessee, 78 to 68 in Mackey Arena. This game ended the Lady Vols 46 game winning streak, by the way, here’s Coach Peck after that massive win.

Carolyn Peck:

Y’all, I cannot tell you how proud I am of you. Let me tell you, hard and intense like you’re on and you hang tough together. They’d make their runs and you showed no sign of fear. You ain’t afraid of nothing. You step on the floor ready to play every day just like that….

Kate Young:

This Boilermaker team was also the first women’s basketball team to sell out Mackey. At the end of the season on March 28th, 1999, this was the team that hoisted the championship trophy up and cut down the net after beating Duke 62 to 45.

The friendship, commitment, and determination that led this legendary women’s team to a national championship will forever be celebrated in our Purdue community. In this special episode of This is Purdue, you’ll hear the heart-wrenching, jaw-dropping, and emotional behind the scenes stories from three of the women who were there for it all. Let’s go.

Thank you all for joining us. We are so excited to celebrate the 1998-1999 Women’s Championship NCAA Championship team. Let’s kick it off with how you all felt coming into that season. The previous season you had won that 1998 Big 10 Tournament, you got to the Elite 8. Did you all know this was a really special team going into that year as the season kicked off?

Ukari Figgs:

You know how long that was? You want us to remember that far back?

Kate Young:

I feel like it was a special time in your life, so you should remember it, right?!

Carolyn Peck:

I remember it like it was yesterday because I had expected to take a job to go to the Orlando Miracle, and I believe Steph and Kari were at USA basketball. So I had to call you guys over the phone. I talked to Kari first and Kari says to me, “Well, every year I’ve had a new head coach and every time we get a new head coach, we go a step further.” That pissed of me off. I’m like, “Well, I’m not going to turn this team over to somebody else.” Then I call Steph and Steph was angry.

If there was anybody that knew we had what it took to win a national championship, it was Steph, and Steph is like … She used some choice language that she was very adult.

Stephanie White:

I did that I might not be proud of.

Carolyn Peck:

Hey, but the message was delivered and she was like, “We can get it done. You can’t leave us.” So after talking to these two, then I knew we had something really special.

Kate Young:

Stephanie and Ukari, how do you feel knowing that you rewrote history in a way by keeping Coach Peck as the head coach for the Purdue Women’s team?

Stephanie White:

I felt relieved. The backstory, Ukari and I had played for three coaches in three years, and there had been a lot of turmoil after our freshman year. We had returned, I think, three scholarship plays, a couple of incoming freshmen that decided to still come. So it was at that time, Coach Peck said, it’s like, “We were this close after having gone through everything that we went through.” So for me, and Kari said it a little bit more tactfully than I did, but for me, it was more just like, “Gosh. Dang, we’ve been going through so much adversity. Now we have this opportunity right in front of us. We don’t want to have to start over.” So I was relieved when Carolyn was able to stay. I think we knew we had what it took and we felt like we had such a unique bond with that team and staff and community, quite honestly, and we didn’t want to let it go. I didn’t anyway.

Carolyn Peck:

Well, and let me tell you, I knew that after the decision was made, I was going to stay. We had a European trip scheduled. Now, I don’t know if Steph knows this, but I know that she’s a planner, and she had an itinerary for everything that she was going to do once we landed in France. So I made it a mission that everywhere she went, I was going because I, one, knew I was going to get a great education of the history, but then two, rebond our connection after knowing that I was going to leave.

Ukari Figgs:

I think for me, just going back to that Elite 8 game and losing to LA Tech, I think we were devastated for one, and then two, just knowing that we, like Steph said, after everything we had gone through in the past, that we had actually everybody from that team back. We thought we had the coaching staff back. Then when Coach made that call, it was like, “Really? What’s going on?” I thought it was pretty funny what I said, but I don’t think she thought that was funny at the time.

For me, I’m just like, “Well, all right. We’ve been through it before, we’ll go further this time.” I think for Steph and I, I guess I would say I can’t speak for her, but after all the years we’ve been together, I can probably speak for her and saying that it really did build a lot of the toughness into us and helped us as leaders, all the adversity we had gone through.

So for the situation that happened with Coach Peck, after Steph and I actually got a chance to talk about it, we’re like, “Wait a minute. Maybe we shouldn’t let this happen.” We wanted to at least let our voice be heard and saying, “Hey, we’re the ones who stayed through all of this. We don’t want to go through another coaching change. We’ve got what it takes right now. We came here to win a national championship. We know we can win it with this team and this coaching staff regardless of whether Coach Peck is here next year or not.” I think we were able to show people that we had the right choice in mind.

Kate Young:

It was important to our podcast team to interview these three women together, and the comradery, love, and respect I witnessed in this interview was truly incredible. I’m sure you as a listener can already pick up on this as well. Coach Peck, Stephanie, and Ukari have a true lifelong bond.

So to give some additional background on Stephanie and Ukari, going into their freshman year at Purdue, Stephanie was the reigning Indiana Miss Basketball and Ukari was the reigning Kentucky Miss Basketball, and both were recruited by a number of universities aside from Purdue. For Stephanie, she says she always dreamed of going to Purdue. She shares more about her Purdue journey.

Stephanie White:

Well, I grew up about 45 minutes away from Purdue and, really, all of my childhood was spent going to Purdue Sports and oftentimes it was volleyball matches. My aunt was a volleyball season ticket holder. She worked at Purdue. I traveled around sometimes to watch the volleyball play at different Big 10 arenas and, of course, watched Purdue basketball as well. So Purdue had always been a place that I had thought about and dreamed of going.

Then other opportunities came about. So then it became, “Okay. Well, you’re being recruited by all these different places, so you do have more than one option.” At the end of the day, I originally majored in aviation. I studied aviation for two years. So Purdue was the only place I could do that as a major, so that added too.

When Ukari and I came to college, there was no WNBA, there wasn’t an opportunity, really, to play basketball beyond college unless we were willing to go overseas, and neither one of us at that time, that really wasn’t an option for us. So the education portion of it was important. For me, I consider myself a community project. I grew up in a small town. Everybody in our community has really been a part of my journey since I started kindergarten. So for them to be able to continue to watch me play and come to our games and be a part of it was really important.

Ukari will probably talk about this too, but one of the things when we were both deciding if we were going to come to Purdue or not was like, “You guys can’t play together. You guys play the same position. You can’t play together. Why would you both want to go there?” That was the extent of the negative recruiting back in the day. It’s much different now, but it was like, “You can’t play together.” If you know anything about us, we’re both pretty stubborn too. So it was like, “You don’t think we can play together? All right. Watch. Watch what we can do together.” That was an added benefit. Ukari committed before I did. So for me, it was an added bonus to be able to play with her.

Kate Young:

Here’s Ukari on her Purdue journey.

Ukari Figgs:

I knew probably in middle school that I wanted to do engineering. As the colleges started letters and things like that, started coming in during high school, I separated them by who had an engineering program and who didn’t. The places that narrowed it down to were probably, I think, the same four schools maybe that Steph had narrowed down to as well, that all had really good engineering programs, but also their basketball programs were highly touted as well.

So as Steph mentioned, it was one of those things where everybody for me that was recruiting me outside of Purdue was saying, “Oh, Steph’s from Indiana. She’s going to be Miss Indiana Basketball. You don’t want to go there. You’re not going to get to play. She’s going to get all the publicity,” ‘blah, blah, blah. I’m sitting here thinking like, “I’m not playing basketball to get publicity. I’m playing to win. Why wouldn’t I want to play with one of the best players in the country?” It didn’t make sense to me.

Once I got to actually meet Steph, I think maybe it was my junior year or one year I went to Purdue’s basketball camp. So it was me, Steph, and Monica Maxwell at camp, and we were all talking about who was recruiting us and where we thought we might go, et cetera. We didn’t do a good job, obviously, of getting Monica to come to Purdue, but anyway, but Steph and I, we all wanted to win a national championship. We wanted to be able to compete for championships. I think for me, the combination of having one of the top engineering schools in the country, as well as knowing that I could do it close to home where my family … I’m three and a half, four hours from home and my family, like Steph, had been at every game, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, everybody. So for me, it was really important.

So at the time, the Big 10 Network was a great way for people to be able to see the away games, which honestly when you look at Stanford or somewhere out on the West Coast, we couldn’t get those channels. In Kentucky, at least, you couldn’t get them without having cable, which in the area I was in was not possible. So anyway, it was a really big thing for me once I got on campus. I think we took our official visit to Purdue together and getting to know Steph more and seeing the team, et cetera. So it ended up working out well both from the engineering standpoint and, obviously, from basketball.

Kate Young:

For this dynamic duo, their bond goes back even further to before their time as teammates at Purdue. So your history goes back even to high school. That’s incredible.

Ukari Figgs:

Yeah, high school and then, actually, when we got Miss Basketball, during that time, you could still play AAU, so we were still under 18. We actually got Miss Basketball in Indiana and Kentucky and played AAU together that summer with Monica, with Mackenzie Curless, and won, actually, the AAU championship that year. So we got our first championship together in AAU, which was I think an even better experience because we got to play more together and just get a better feel before we even got to Purdue.

Stephanie White:

You can probably tell we’re very much aligned in our viewpoints of things. I think that for us, we were linearly focused on academics and being the best that we could be and helping Purdue be the best that we could be. It didn’t matter how it happened. That’s what we wanted to accomplish. So for us to be able to know that I think from the beginning and have a strong foundation of just beliefs and core values, it allowed us to very quickly, I think, step onto the floor, be great teammates, and be leaders for our team because it wasn’t about us. It was about what can we accomplish. Can we accomplish the goals that we want to accomplish together at Purdue? It was a windy road with a lot of peaks and valleys, but ultimately, we were able to do that and that was our goal outside of getting our degrees when we stepped foot on campus together.

Kate Young:

So fast forward to their senior year at Purdue, Stephanie and Ukari earned the titles of co-captains during the 1998-1999 season. They reflect back on leading this championship winning team 25 years ago. Here’s Ukari.

Ukari Figgs:

I think as leaders, Steph and I, obviously, have different communication methods and our personalities are similar, but also they’re probably complimentary of each other in that I’m probably the more fiery, things are black and white, very direct, and don’t really sugarcoat a lot of things for people, but at the same time, I had a connection with maybe some of the team that Steph maybe had a connection with other members of the team. So we complemented each other well and we’re really co-captains. There were games when I was struggling and Steph would pick me up or come be the person to help me, and the same thing for Steph. If one of us were struggling, the other one picked each other up, and I think it worked well both for us and also for our team.

Stephanie White:

I think the other thing is that after what Ukari and I had been through and throughout the course of our three years up until that point, we had a different sense of urgency. While some people would probably call us a little bit overbearing, we also knew that there’s a small window, and that for us in particular, being that we were going to be seniors, the window was closing. We didn’t want any distractions, we didn’t want anything to take away from the opportunity because it had been such a struggle for us to get to where we were, and we had gone through that together.

Ukari and I had been bonded as soon as we got to Purdue, but going through all of the things that we had gone through, it just made our bond even tighter. So we were very aligned, very supportive of one another and, as Ukari mentioned, complementary of one another in the way that we did things. We had a really good group that if they fell out of line in our mind, then we nipped it in the bud, we brought them together, and we helped them understand, and I think they did understand that this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity for us.

Kate Young:

Throughout the season, this team hit a number of milestones. One of those was a sellout at Mackey Arena, the first Purdue Women’s Basketball team to do so. The he team defeated Ohio State 88 to 58 in front of a crowd of 14,123 fans. Coach Peck, Stephanie, and Ukari reflect on this game, and you’ll hear why this particular Big 10 matchup was an incredibly emotional one for this close-knit team. What was that feeling like? How did you all find out? Take us back to that game.

Stephanie White:

I don’t know how we found out because there was no social media. We didn’t find out on social media. I just remember running through the tunnel, and as soon as we stepped onto the floor hearing the crowd erupt and looking up. I think that was one of the few times I’d ever gotten really emotional before a game. I had tears in my eyes because it was a special day. We had a special team. Our community really rallied behind us and were with us. It just was a really indescribable feeling, a sense of pride that up until that point, I’m not sure that I had felt that it just really did overcome me with emotion.

Ukari Figgs:

It was an emotional week for me just because it was the week my grandmother had passed away. We had a really tough game at Penn State that Friday. Honestly, with it being senior night, I was already emotional or a little bit just, I guess, maybe overwhelmed just from, like Steph said, just everything we had gone through, what we knew we came to Purdue to do, and to walk out of the tunnel and see all those fans.

Then for me personally, a lot of people from my church, from my family, from my community came up from Kentucky to support me. It was a pretty awesome ordeal. Actually, I’m friends with one of the players on Ohio State’s team. I really honestly don’t think they thought they had a chance before the game, but when you looked at that crowd, it was like they don’t even have a chance here because we were really pumped up, and I think everybody came out with a great energy. The Purdue fans are amazing. It was awesome send out for senior night, I think, to have that sold out.

Carolyn Peck:

I thought that these two, Steph and Kari deserved that. I was really happy that the state really, the state of Indiana and Kentucky really showed up for that game to really show their appreciation for what these two have been through and what they were. It was a sendoff too into the Big 10 tournament, into the NCA tournament. So I felt like Steph and Kari deserved that. So I can’t even tell you how appreciative I was to see how that fan support rallied around these two.

Kate Young:

As the season progressed, this Boilermaker Women’s Basketball team went 16 and 0 during Big 10 play and won both the Big 10 regular season and Conference Tournament championships. As March Madness approached, the team secured the number one seat along with Yukon, Tennessee, and Louisiana Tech. Purdue beat Oral Roberts, Kansas, North Carolina, and Rutgers in the March Madness Tournament until they secured their spot in the Final Four. Coach Peck kicks it off for us with the real story behind this team’s championship run, the details that even our most diehard Boilermaker athletics fans may not know.

Talk us through that trip to the Final Four and ultimately winning the whole thing. How does it feel now 25 years later, but also, reflecting back, can you remember the nerves, the excitement?

Carolyn Peck:

Well, you want the real story?

Kate Young:

Yes, we do.

Carolyn Peck:

This is a team that felt like we had been disrespected all season long even though we started the season off by knocking off Tennessee. There was always the talk of Tennessee and Connecticut. Then when we get to San Jose, Tennessee and Connecticut aren’t there. We’re not in the best hotel. We had to call our band who was on their way to San Francisco to go sightsee and to bring the bus back so we could go to practice. It was just like, “What else could go wrong?” but it never the team from staying focused on the mission of what we were there to do.

We couldn’t even get the brand new gear. Y’all remember, we practiced in … Back in those days, you threw the practice gear in the dryer, so some of our numbers were peeled off. The other three teams are out there in shiny new gear and we’re out there like the bad news bears, but it was a focus that this team had. I really felt like if we could get past Louisiana Tech, we had a really good chance of winning the national championship.

Now, we had a motivating factor from the previous year. It was Louisiana Tech who had knocked us off, but they had a phenomenal team and rebounding was their strength, the athleticism. Monica, what was Monica’s last name?

Ukari Figgs:

Maxwell.

Stephanie White:

Maxwell.

Carolyn Peck:

Monica Maxwell, I swear that woman had wings. She could fly. So remember the practices leading up to that? Those were freaking football practices, and I told you guys, “If you can’t get a butt on somebody, just chest bump them, just go straight ahead, but keep them off the glass,” and it was a war, it was a battle.

Stephanie White:

It was. I don’t remember a lot of the details between the end of the season and into the tournament. I just remember being very locked in and laser focused. I think our regional … Was that at Illinois State? At Illinois State, and we had two really good teams that we had to get past in the regional, North Carolina and Rutgers, and they were very good. I remember feeling a little bit relieved when we won and we were going to the Final Four. It was like emotion, this is what we’d work towards, it’s finally here, go up to cut down the net. I’m so excited. I get down off of the ladder afterwards and I’m like, “Okay. This isn’t what you want.” I had to remind myself because I was just so happy and so excited and felt so relieved that we had finally gotten to that point, and then had to really remind myself and bring myself back to being locked in on, “Yeah, this is a no-no. We want the national championship.”

Obviously, we weren’t privy to a lot of the logistical stuff. I know we were disappointed in our hotel. I know we were on that rackety bus, but at the same time it was like, “Okay.” Well, we didn’t know any different. We didn’t know any different. We were just going to go. We were going to play and we were going to do the best that we could and we were going to fight for national championship.

Ukari Figgs:

The game against Rutgers was probably the game for me just because, again, we had come here to win the national championship. We had gotten to the Elite 8 before and just not wanting to mess it up. We knew we had the team, we had what we needed. Both those games were tough games, but the Rutgers game was definitely a physical game. They had a really strong team and, obviously, a hall of Fame coach that we were going up against, but I remember the end of that game. Once we knew we were going to win and looking over at Steph and just thinking that, “This is what we came here for,” even though we went through a lot, it wasn’t really the path that we would’ve imagined when we came, but this was what it was.

Then to her point, I don’t honestly remember the bus, I don’t remember the hotel, anything other than you’re going to talk about later maybe the exam that I knew I had to take in the middle of the Final Four, but I was trying to just enjoyed being there because we had worked so hard and it was like, “Okay. Now we’re here,” but to Steph’s point, it’s like, “You don’t want to be excited or be okay with just being here. We want to win it. We want to come out here and win it.” So I think it was a really motivating thing for me just to know we’ve come this far, let’s not mess it up.

Kate Young:

So they did it. They were the national champions, and the accolades didn’t stop there. Ukari was named the 1999 NCAA tournament Most Outstanding Player. Stephanie was named Big 10 Female Athlete of the Year, Big 10 Player of the Year, the Margaret Wade Trophy Recipient, and the Honda Award winner. Coach Peck was named National Coach of the Year and Big 10 Coach of the Year. So I was curious, how does one celebrate after winning a national championship? Well, for Coach Peck, at first it wasn’t exactly the celebration she had in mind.

Carolyn Peck:

After that game, I come back to my suite and one of our managers comes to the door to tell me that we’re going to fly back. Then she said, “We’re going to leave in two hours,” and I said, “To go where?” and they said, “We got to get back to West Lafayette. The girls got to go to class,” and I’m like, I’m thinking, “Class? We just won a national championship.”

Kate Young:

Okay. So I see where Coach was coming from, but hey, even as national champions, these young women had to get back to class. It’s all about the balance. Coach Peck details a more exciting celebration that came once they landed in Indiana and made their way back to campus.

Carolyn Peck:

So they were like, “No, we’ve got to fly back to West Lafayette.” Well, then the fog set in, so we had to fly into Indianapolis until the fog cleared, and then when we got back, the fans, some of them were still there, but then we got to come back in Mackey and going through the athlete line. They had arranged a line of all of the athletes. I believe the last hand that I slapped, the high five before I went on the stage, that was freaking Drew Breeze. It was so exciting because a football team helped. They tackled my girls after we beat Tennessee. They followed this team. They were at the game. They were so supportive.

Kate Young:

Here’s Purdue’s beloved former vice president and director of athletics, Morgan Burke and Coach Peck herself at the team’s official championship celebration and ceremony.

Speaker 6:

You’ll hear a lot of accolades this evening about these young women. Not only are they great students, great athletes, but they’ve been tremendous role models for this entire community, and this championship reinforces that not only can we compete against the best, we can beat the best.

Speaker 7:

Focus, focus, focus, that’s what the head coach preached all season long, and the results are pretty apparent. In addition to receiving virtually every individual national coaching award, she’s got the ultimate reward here. She is surrounded by the 1999 national champions. Here’s Head Coach Carolyn Peck.

Carolyn Peck:

This has been a year of first. We’ll start with the first team to end Tennessee’s winning streak against Indiana. Stephanie White McCarty got Purdue’s first triple double for the women’s basketball. This team went undefeated in the Big 10 to be number one, first. They beat all three teams that we played in the Big 10 tournament so we were first. I forgot one. We had our first sellout for a women’s basketball game.

Kate Young:

Since 1999, there have been multiple reunions and celebrations for this iconic team. Coach Peck shares more.

Carolyn Peck:

To see what Mackey had done, but I’m going to tell you the true celebration was the 10-year celebration when Sharon Versyp brought us all back. That was the first time as adults we could really celebrate that championship. That’s where I felt like the true celebration really started.

Kate Young:

Here’s Ukari.

Ukari Figgs:

Definitely the 10-year with everybody there and being able to, like you said, be that first time we were able to celebrate and all come back together, but we had the celebration in Mackey. Unfortunately, Steph and Coach Peck weren’t able to be there, but we did FaceTime them. We called them and made sure they were a part of some of the celebration, but it was really good to get to see some of the team and Amy Shaffer and Danielle Bird, two of the players who walked on during our sophomore year in order for us to just have enough people to have a team. So their sacrifice and people look at Steph and I as being the captains and being the leaders, but we had a lot of other people that sacrificed and did a lot for the team to even be able to compete for a national championship. So it was really cool to get to see them, their families. Mackenzie Curless came back, which Mackenzie was one of the members on that team from sophomore year as well and lives out in Wyoming, so we don’t get to see her as much. So it was really cool to get to see everybody.

I really didn’t realize how close this team was until I went to the WNBA and I would talk to Steph or we would talk to other people about their experience in college and we’re like, “You guys didn’t go to the movie. You guys didn’t hang out together or you didn’t go eat together or whatever,” but every time we played or we played against one of our teammates, we always wanted to get together or the coaches when Coach Peck was there. So it’s one of those things where you don’t really realize how tight that connection is because we just experience it and we’re a part of it, but it’s a really unique thing, I think. Even the Purdue staff and team members now are like, “You all haven’t seen each other in 15 years or 20 years and it’s just like you pick right back up.”

Stephanie White:

I think the older we get too, the more we can appreciate that because we’ve had different experiences, whether it be with different teams or different jobs, and all of these different situations. For us, we’re talking to all of these young people now and continuing to realize that very few get to have the experience that we had collegiately with the team. So it reminds us that it really was the journey. It really was the journey. It really was the memories. It really was all of those things that sound very cliche.

So to think about celebrating this championship, yes, the trophy’s awesome and, yes, winning the national championship and continuing to be the only Big 10 team to do it and seeing the banner, all that is awesome, but when we get together, we ain’t talking about that. We’re talking about the practices and we’re talking about the experiences and the moments and all of those things. They are still very, very fresh because we are still family, and now we’re talking about our kids and all of these things too. So it really does remind us how very, very fortunate that we were.

Kate Young:

So out of all the milestones and firsts and triumphs, what were these three women’s favorite memories from that historic 1998-1999 season? Here’s Ukari.

Ukari Figgs:

I would say for me it’s definitely the Penn State game at Penn State, I think, and I’ll try not to break down, but my grandmother had passed away that week unexpectedly. The game was a tough game. Well, it was tough for me, actually, even to get to the game because of the weather and the flight getting canceled and having to take a taxi or whatever over to Penn State from Pittsburgh, and then knowing that Steph was sick and she was trying to still play. It was a lot going on before the game, but then even towards the end of the game, I remember telling Katie, I’m like, “Katie, if you don’t ever hit another shot, hit this shot.” We drew up a play for Katie to go left and, of course, they let her go left and she makes the shot, but I just remember the team congratulating each other, but really, I just felt that love and that support because, like you can tell and just people know from our team, that we are a family, not just a team, and for everybody to embrace me, I think, most of the time it’s like people are thinking we’re celebrating the win, but I think that team was just huddled up around each other and just help and support. I’ll never forget that because it was a tough week for me.

Kate Young:

Here’s Stephanie’s standout memory from that season.

Stephanie White:

Certainly, beating Tennessee to start the year, that was one. We were using that game as a measuring stick of where we were and where we wanted to go. Losing the way that we did at Stanford, that was another one. Just disappointing, but also, I think, reframed a narrative for us in how sharp we have to be all the time. That Penn State game that Ukari mentioned, just getting her there, free cellphone, it was logistically just … The fact that she could have been anywhere but there being with her family and grieving with her family, and she went through all of that to be with us and to play that game, and we didn’t want to let her down. We wanted to lift her up and we wanted to have her back and we wanted to do it for her. It was an emotional, it was a heavy game for all of us. I think that being there for her and supporting her was our priority, and thankfully, Katie was able to deliver.

Then you come to that last game in Ohio State and the soldout crowd, just the emotions of senior day and what we’d been through and where we were. I remember nothing about the Big 10 tournament and beating Rutgers and then hoisting the trophy and flying home on a red eye. That’s what I remember.

Ukari Figgs:

With a broken ankle.

Stephanie White:

With a broken ankle.

Ukari Figgs:

I’ll mention one thing because Steph, when she said they wanted to have my back at Penn State, Steph thought … A lot of people don’t see the, I guess, the energy or the passion that Steph has all the time. She plays like I did a lot, just you play, you don’t have a lot of emotion, but before the game, I went out to shoot, we were out shooting and somebody was heckling me and just tell, “Oh, Figgs, you’re terrible. You can’t shoot,” just saying crazy stuff. I was trying to tune it out, but it was honestly getting to me, but Steph came out and was pissed off. I don’t remember if she said something to the girl or went and told their coaches like, “You better tell this girl to be quiet because Kari’s got enough going on than to deal with a heckling fan,” but just for me, again, the sisterhood, the friendship, the concern about me when she’s actually the one that has a fever trying to play through or figure out how to play with that fever. So anyway, that’s the kind of team and the kind of bond we have and why 25 years later we’re still … I’m in her house right now.

Kate Young:

Finally, Coach Peck reflects on her favorite memories.

Carolyn Peck:

I would say for me, there were bookends. So you start with that Tennessee game. I can remember Steph hitting a N1 and come marching out of the huddle of people. I don’t know what she was saying, but she was ready to go.

Stephanie White:

Bleep, bleep, bleep.

Carolyn Peck:

All the way to Tennessee’s final time out that Pat Summit had, and everybody comes to the bench, they’re jumping up and down, everybody’s excited, and Steph’s grabbing her teammates telling them not to celebrate because we’re supposed to be here. So that started and led to what you saw this team to be able to do and be. Then you get to that national championship game. Katie Douglas was emotional before the game. I got into the locker room, Katie’s crying, Tiffany’s crying, Camille is crying. So I go to Tiff first and I go, “Tiff, why are you crying?” and she said, “Well, because Camille’s crying,” and I said, “Camille, why are you crying?” and she said, “Well, Katie was crying.” Well, Katie was extremely emotional because she had lost her father before her freshman year at Purdue, and they felt that for each other. Didn’t have time, we’re down.

So I go into the coach’s locker room. We have our little meeting. Everybody had suggestions of Xs and Os, and I was like, “That’s not the answer.” So I came out and in front of them, and Step and Kari sat right in the middle because they were my captains, and I said, “Y’all, we’re exactly where we want to be,” and these two looked at me like I was absolutely crazy. I said, “Do you remember the Elite 8 last year?” I said, “We were ahead of Louisiana Tech. They came back and took it from us and we’re getting ready to do that to do.” It was again, Steph, we got to check your little soap in your mouth because she stood up and dropped the bomb and was like blank, “Yeah.” The rest of the team with how much they believed in these two and the leadership that they could bring, that second half, they went out and took over.

Then vividly, I remember when Steph went down, and we relied a lot on Steph, and Kari had had a phenomenal tournament, but it was like, “Can they do it with just one of them?” When Steph was down, Kari went over and put her arm around Steph, and I could tell she was telling her, “We’re going to do this for you.” I get emotional thinking about it, but they just took over. I can see flashbacks of the camera going over to Steph and Tiffany Young is holding her hand as tight as possible, but that group bonded together to complete the mission, and they did it for each other. With the clock running down, who else but Katie Douglas has the basketball in her hands. I remember looking down and I’m going, “The bad news bears, we got it done.”

Let me tell you, this team taught me that you don’t have to be older to teach lessons. You can learn from young people. I don’t even know if there’s a word to describe how tight this team was and the commitment that they had not only to wanting to commit to winning a national championship, but what they had for each other, the pride that they had in each other, and that program, it’s something that you wish that everybody in their lifetime could experience but not everybody gets to. That’s why I love this group because I learned so much from them of what sacrificing meant, what commitment meant, what determination meant. They showed that to me throughout that whole entire season.

Stephanie White:

I remember in that … Wait, I want to remember on that game that Ukari steal of Nicole Erickson, who had been a player that was at Purdue and left and transferred to Duke, and then Kelly making the big free throws, a freshman coming in that moment and making the big free throws. There are a lot of specific plays from either one of those games at the Final Four. I remember Ukari had just an outstanding Final Four national championship, but those two plays in particular. At a critical moment, Kari gets that steal from Ericson, which I thought was very poetic, and Kelly knocking down those big free throws in a critical, critical moment. To Carolyn’s point, we just had the ultimate trust and belief in one another.

Kate Young:

So some of these memories are emotional, some are celebratory, but overall, these stories reflect just how close this team really was as Coach Peck just alluded to. Before we move on, Ukari did share one last behind the scenes Final Four story with me.

Ukari Figgs:

I had heat and mass transfer, and when we were going through every time during the NCA tournament, I would look at the syllabus for each class and see what projects or tests I had so that I could plan accordingly and try to either study or get stuff done before a big tournament or whatever. So I knew if we made it to the final four that I was going to have to take this exam. So I talked to Sue and she’s like, “Hey, just keep studying for it, but if you get to the point where you get to the Final Four, you’re going to either have to ask your professor if you can take it early or you’ll have to take it with you and somebody will have to proctor it for you during the Final Four,” and I’m like, “Okay.”

So we get there and I contact my professor or I let him know in advance like, “Hey, if we get this far, I’m going to need to either take the exam early or whatever.” So we got to the point, I talked to him and I said, “Hey, can I go ahead and take the exam before I go? I’d really like to be able to focus for, one, on the exam and then two, be able to have my focus on the Final Four.” He was like, “Nope, absolutely not. You’re going to take it at the same time as everybody else. You can’t take it early.” I’m thinking, I don’t know honestly what his thought process was because at the time, I’m telling my age, but there were no cellphones, there wasn’t really any way for me to take the answers and give it to anybody else or whatever.

So anyway, he didn’t agree to that. Then I had to decide did I want to take it before the first game or after the first game. In my mind I’m thinking, “If I take this thing before the first game, I’m not going to be able to focus on the game or the exam.” I decided to play in the first game and then take it after we won hopefully that first game. So I ended up won that first game and then studied like crazy, took the exam, and then I still say the reason I went over eight in the first half was I was still thinking about that heat and mass transfer exam. So that’s my excuse for why I played so bad in the first half of the Duke game.

Kate Young:

Hey, I do not blame you. I’d still be like, “What did I answer with that?” Oh, that’s great.

Stephanie White:

I didn’t even know that story until we did the documentary with the Big 10 Network. I had no idea that Kari had to take an exam when we were at the Final Four. We’re living our best life at the Final Four, and we’re playing basketball and we’re signing autographs and we’re doing all that stuff. I don’t even know what heat and mass transfer is, and she’s having to take an exam about it, so didn’t know that at all. So a whole new level of respect came after we found that out.

Kate Young:

Well, what a testament to her too that you’re not sitting there complaining like, “Oh, I have to take this exam. I can’t believe it.”

Stephanie White:

Oh, yeah, no idea.

Kate Young:

While we’re on the topic of this, how did Ukari and Stephanie balance Purdue’s rigorous academics with being the best college basketball team in the entire nation?

Ukari Figgs:

I would say for me, a lot of it was … I’ll say one. It was, for one, the coaches, the support from the coaches. Even before I got to Purdue, Cindy Lamping and Shannon Lindsey were two of the players that were already doing mechanical engineering and chemical engineering and playing significant minutes for the team. So for me, I knew if they’ve got two people doing it now, if I work hard, I can do it too, but knowing that the coaches would allow the flexibility in the schedule around labs and things like that and trying to work through that situation was beneficial.

Then also for Purdue with the academic center at the time, Sue Ofter Hudd was our academic advisor, I guess, and she was the one that honestly, probably single-handedly gave me the confidence to do it because there was an advisor I remember on campus that when I told them initially as a freshman that I wanted to do basketball and mechanical engineering, he came back and said, “Well, that’s going to be really hard for you to do both,” and I said, “I understand that, but that’s what I want to do.” Sue, when I went to Sue and I’m like, “Hey, am I crazy for thinking I can do this?” and she’s like, “Absolutely not. You can do it. Shannon and Cindy did it. We can set your schedules up. We’ll have to plan accordingly for your spring semester and your fall semester, and even take some of these harder classes or tougher labs during the summer. You can stay here during the summer.” So she gave me that confidence and also helped me throughout that ordeal.

Kate Young:

Here’s Stephanie on how she handled the balance between academics and athletics during her time at Purdue.

Stephanie White:

I do think we had an advantage then because there weren’t as many distractions. There’s so many distractions now, and there wasn’t the cellphone, there wasn’t social media. We weren’t reading the paper unless we went and bought one, and we didn’t have money to do that because there was no NIL. There weren’t as many distractions. As I mentioned before, we’re pretty literally focused. So we managed our time well. We spent time doing what we were supposed to do. College was a means to an end for us. We wanted to get our degree, we wanted to win a championship, and then we were going into the next step of our lives. Not everybody felt that way, but that’s just who we were.

So for us, it was more along the lines of, “Okay. Let’s make sure that we do as much as we can ahead of time so that no matter where we are, we can be all there, so we can completely focus when we’re at practice and we can completely focus when we’re in school and we can completely focus on the road or we’re spending time with our team.” I don’t know that we knew how to articulate that at the time. It’s just who we were, and I think that that allowed us to wear a lot of different hats and allowed us to be successful academically and athletically, and we’re both very goal-oriented. So we wanted to make sure that we were accomplishing our academic goals as well.

Ukari mentioned the resources. Even though the resources weren’t as vast as they were as they are now, the quality of the resources were tremendous. Sue Ofter Hudd was the best, that she kept us aligned. I changed majors. I was in aviation for two years. I changed to communications after that. I had no idea which direction I wanted to go. Sue help with that. Our coaches were very accommodating. Our teammates understood as well. So if we had to go late for practice that day and we weren’t starting until 7:00 at night, it was just, “Okay. It’s what we’re doing.”

So I do feel like we had the best of all worlds at Purdue. I think the foundation that we laid in terms of our work ethic, our work style, being a part of a team, but also our expectations of what it meant to be a part of a team and what it meant to be your best every day, that really started at Purdue. Really, I would give the credit to it really started after our freshman year at Purdue when our narrative was really reframed. Our experience wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. Everything changed after that year for us on the basketball floor. I think it brought us a renewed focus on what we wanted our experience to be. Then that set us up for what we want our lives to be, and those are lessons that we learned while we were at Purdue.

Ukari Figgs:

I will say I’m glad that Stephanie changed her major from aviation because she tried to get me to go fly with her one day, and in one of those, I don’t know how small, it’s probably a two-seater or maybe three.

Stephanie White:

Single engine.

Ukari Figgs:

I’m like, “Steph, I love you. You’re a great teammate and friend, but no, thank you.”

Stephanie White:

“But I’m not doing that.”

Ukari Figgs:

“I trust you on the floor, but there’s boundaries here. I’m not going up with you.”

Kate Young:

With Ukari’s background in engineering as a Purdue School of Mechanical Engineering alumna, she shares a story of another Boilermaker engineering alum, and this isn’t just any Boilermaker.

Ukari Figgs:

It was crazy. So after practice, a lot of times we would go up in the basketball office and either talk to the coaches or talk to the secretaries or the people who are in the office taking care of the office for everybody. Leah and Dee were the two people, I think, at the time that were there, maybe Leah, for sure. So we would have our little slots there with our name on it, and if we got fan mail or whatever, we could grab it. When I went up there and I’m talking and they’re like, “Oh, you got some fan mail.” So I grab it. There’s a couple of letters or whatever. Don’t really think anything of it. So I think I got that, went to training table to eat, then went on over to Owen Hall. I don’t even know if I opened it right away, but I started opening some of the mail and I’m like, “Oh, this is a nice letter from a fan.”

Then I opened that one and I’m like, “Wait a minute.” I’m reading it and I’m like, “This is Neil Arm-” I’m like, “There’s no way This is real. Literally, who’s playing a joke on me?” whatever, but come to find out it was, and it was interesting because I used to want to be an astronaut, and that’s what got me interested in being an engineer because most or at the time at least, most of the people who are astronauts had gotten engineering degrees. So I had said this in a newsletter or some kind of newsletter, they were asking us random questions or whatever, and I must have told them growing up as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. So he had in the letter said, “Hey, I saw the newsletter. I saw you wanted to be an astronaut. You would love to play basketball on the moon. You could slam dunk with no problem,” or whatever.

So I’m smart enough to have kept that letter. It’s framed at my house, but for me, honestly, it’s one of those things that’s surreal. Looking back, I wish I had have asked to meet him at the time because I never actually got to meet Mr. Armstrong, but it was something for me that I was like, “Man, here I am this sophomore on a team that basically just disintegrated, and we’re not a big name or anything like that, but here’s this most famous Purdue alum that’s taken the time to write a letter to me,” and that really was grounding for me and also is something I think later on you wanted to talk about what sets Purdue apart or why I’m so proud to be a Purdue alum, but it’s alums like that and the small gestures that people make that really make me proud to be a Boilermaker.

Kate Young:

So what happened after these two national champions graduated from Purdue in 1999? Well, they both went on to have professional playing careers within the WNBA, and they both coached in the basketball world as well. Stephanie continued her coaching career and is now the head coach of the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun. She also just won WNBA’s Coach of the Year in 2023. Meanwhile, Ukari has been enjoying her career post-basketball as an engineer for Toyota in her hometown of Georgetown, Kentucky. So what happened after the ball stopped bouncing, and how did their Purdue experiences help set them up for success, both within the WNBA and then later in their careers outside of playing professional basketball?

Stephanie White:

I don’t know that either one of us could have predicted being able to play basketball after college. I know Ukari always wanted to be an engineer. I had no idea. I didn’t think I wanted to coach. Coaching never crossed my mind, but I do know that having the opportunity to continue our career, we might’ve been sophomores, freshmen or sophomores win the WNBA came into existence. It was just the next step for us. We were drafted. We were going to go be a part of a team. Playing in the W was different than college, and Kari alluded to it. We had a unique experience as far as being a part of a true team that felt like family. When you’re a pro, it’s not like that. Most places, it’s not like that. It’s your job, and just like most places, you go to your job, you go home. So that was different for us.

Neither one of us had really long careers. For me, I had a lot of injuries. That ankle that I hurt in the national championship game, I ended up having three surgeries on that and then a number of surgeries as well. I think I had six in three years, and so it cut my playing career short. I remember before the last year that I played Ball State University, the head coach there, Tracy Roller, she had season tickets to the Fever and I was playing for the Fever. She came in and she asked me, “Have you ever thought about coaching?” and I was like, “Not really.”

She said, “Well, I have an assistant coaching position and I wonder if you’d like to take it,” and I said, “Well, I’m not quite ready to finish playing,” and she’s like, “That’s all right. We’re just up the road so you can coach in the winter and train and then come back and play in the summertime.” I was like, “You know what? Maybe I will try that. Maybe just see if I like it.” It’ll be convenient because I’m still in Indiana. I don’t have to worry about moving or anything like that. So I did it.

I remember the first time I stepped foot on the floor, it was like I felt like I was home. I felt like I was home, and I knew that that was what I was supposed to do. So it made it a little bit easier for me when it came time to hang it up because then I went back and I played one more year. I tore my ACL, and so it made it easier for me to say, “Okay. It’s time to move on to the next thing.”

I don’t know that I anticipated my career path would bring me back to the W at the time. I was coaching in college for a number of years, and then a job in Chicago opened up and I was asked to make that leap to bring former players back into the league. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed working with pros. I really enjoyed trying to be on the forefront of the best basketball in the world, challenging me in a number of ways. So it just went from there.

During that time in Chicago, I was also very lucky and fortunate because that was when the Big 10 Network started. The head coach that I worked for in Chicago didn’t like to do the television interviews. So I would do our pre-game interviews and our halftime interviews and our post-game interviews. The man who was doing our playbook play at the time, his name is Eric Collins, he’s now the voice of the Charlotte Hornets, but he asked me, he’s like, “Why aren’t you working in television?” I was like, “What do you mean? What would I do in television? I don’t know.” He said, “The Big 10 Network’s starting. I want you to call this man.” He gave me the name of Tim Sutton and Leon Schwier, who’s a Purdue alum, and I called and they were like, “Yeah, why don’t you come in? We’ll try out. We’ll give you a few games.”

A few games turned into 50 that first year for me, 50 events between games and studios because I was living in Chicago, the studio was in Chicago. So it really gave me this entirely new career path. So since that year, which I think it was 2008, ’07, ’08, ’09, somewhere around there, it all blends together when you get old, but since then, I’ve had these two careers. So I changed to communications when I was at Purdue. Had no idea what I wanted to do, so I studied General Comm and it led me into two professions where communicating is all I do and finding different ways to communicate and finding different ways to get the message across.

So I’m very thankful for that experience. I felt like I was never the most athletic player, the most gifted player, the most talented player, but the way that I could see the game and think the game was always my strength and that naturally transitioned to coaching. I hope that naturally helps when I’m calling games that gives the viewer a different perspective as well. So I’m thankful that that foundation was laid while I was at Purdue, but every once in a while you got to get lucky, and I got lucky when I was in Chicago and it’s led to this.

Ukari Figgs:

Lucky and talented would be the one part that she left out there. So I think for me, as Steph mentioned, I never really was thinking about professional basketball while I was at Purdue. So when the WNBA, there’s the ABL, the Women’s Basketball League, the ABL was there, and there were a couple players from Purdue that were playing in the ABL I think at the time, but actually, coming out of one of my final exams is when I found out I got drafted with the WNBA, but part of the problem for us, I guess, that year was the ABL had folded. So we got in the draft with all the professional players from that league. So I got drafted by Los Angeles and I’m like, “Well, this is going to be crazy to try to go out,” but I got also fortunate as a point guard to pass the ball to Lisa Leslie. For me, I’m like, “Well, I’ll go out and give it a try. If I don’t make it, I’ll move forward and use my degree.”

So when I made the team and was able to become one of the starters on the team and get some playing time, but like Steph said, it was one of those things where that team was really talented, probably like our team, our Purdue, our freshman year, super, super talented, but everybody wasn’t playing necessarily together at the time. So my experience I think at Purdue helped me to be able to help facilitate becoming more of a team. Over that next three years, our team really bonded and not just because, obviously, of what I did, but Michael Cooper became our coach and we had a lot of players that bought into what he was wanting us to do and was fortunate enough to win the WNBA championship as well in ’01.

During the time that I played in the WNBA, during the off season, I actually worked at Caterpillar in Lafayette. I’d never had a chance to use my engineering degree because I couldn’t co-op. I was usually taking classes during the summer. So I did that during the WNBA off season and then came back and played. It was, for me, something that showed me like, “Yes, you’re pretty good at basketball, but you’re also able to be successful in your engineering career as well.” So I don’t know. We won the championship in Los Angeles, and then maybe two days before I was supposed to fly back to Los Angeles, I got traded to Portland and I went and played in Portland for a year. Their team folded. All these things were happening and I’m like, “You know what? I’m going to just go use my engineering degree.”

So I went and worked for my mentor in Lexington at a small consulting engineering firm. Then Houston Comets’ Coach Van Chancellor called me and wanted me to try to come back and play, and I’m like, “Van, I’ll play one more year and after that I’m done. I’m going to use my engineering degree.” So I came back and it was one of those opportunities you couldn’t turn down because it’s like you get to play with Sheryl Swoopes, Cynthia Cooper, Tina Thompson. It’s like they had a dynasty in the WNBA, so getting to be that point guard for them, but I knew that year, after that year or actually during the year, I’m like, “You know what? I don’t have it. This isn’t the same experience that maybe I had at Purdue,” or even on that championship team in Los Angeles were actually the closest thing to our Purdue team as far as closeness. I still keep in contact with some of those teammates, but I decided to go ahead and leave.

Then I came and worked at Toyota in my hometown of Georgetown, Kentucky as an engineer there. I’ve been here a total of 17 years now, but I did take a little bit of a hiatus and tried the coaching thing for four years. I came back and coached at Purdue for two years, and then at University of Kentucky. I was on their staff for a couple years, but after I had my son, I realized it was a lot more. There were a couple of times I called Coach Peck or Carrie Kermins or Pam Stackhouse that were our coaches and said, “Man, I didn’t realize what you all, everything you all did.”

I think we used to laugh sometimes, and I gave Coach Peck another name. We called her Claudine for the days that most of the days she would wear her contacts and she was upbeat and her hair was fixed and everything, but then there would be days that she would come in with her glasses on. She looked like she was worn out, hair might’ve been a little frizzled or whatever. So those were the days she was probably out coming back from recruiting, late night recruiting, whatever.

So anyway, I got a chance to really see the coaching side and came back to Toyota. Now, I’m an executive at Toyota in my hometown. It’s been a great experience. I think Purdue definitely, and even just the basketball and all the adversity that Steph and I have talked about that we’ve gone through, it’s great life lessons through sports, and obviously, most people’s job and career don’t always go right as planned, but you do have to have a plan to at least try to know what you want to try to do.

There’s a lot of people, I know for me, that tried to track me from what I wanted to do. It was like I’ve known I’ve wanted to do engineering, but people have, “Oh, well, play a couple more years or go overseas. You can play and make money,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I can make money for two or three more years, but if I use my degree, I can sustain myself for the rest of my life.” So that was the decision making for me. I’ve also come back and been able to talk to some of the Purdue students and some of the classes just about engineering and just the different things you can do with engineering, because honestly for me, it’s like right now with what I do in my day-to-day, I don’t get to do the actual engineering work, but I get to help be the person that leads and helps mentor and support and hopefully inspire other people who are engineers to continue to grow and develop in the organization.

Kate Young:

As you just heard, Stephanie and Ukari have gone on to have incredible careers since winning a national title in college and playing professional basketball, and they’ve shared so much with us about their journeys since that iconic win, but at the end of the day, why are each of these women proud to be Boilermakers?

Stephanie White:

First and foremost, I’m proud because we have the only national championship banner in Mackey Arena and one in the Big 10. So from a basketball standpoint, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the way that we did it. I’m proud of the teams that we had and the people and friendships and family that I’ve made throughout that process. I don’t know that that would’ve been the same experience that I would have the same lifetime families that I have now, so I’m proud of that. I’m also proud of the community that we have at Purdue. You’ll go a lot of places, and I hope that young people are experiencing what we experienced, but I understand it’s a different time, but at the same time, you’ll go places and you’ll have alums that will reach out. They’ll reach out and they’ll help and they’ll communicate. There’s Purdue bars and restaurants in every city, and you can go and people will remember our team and they’ll remember who we were because we were a source of pride for them.

so I think for us, for me, the sense of community that we had with our fans at the time, with alumni that we have and continue to have in connection now and that banner will always be one of the sources of pride for me.

Ukari Figgs:

I would say for me, as far as Purdue basketball or women’s basketball, and specifically, I would say I’m proud of how the two of us, to be honest, and I know that may be biased for saying proud of us, but proud of we went in with a mission. We went through a lot, but we stuck with that mission and even helped spread it a little bit throughout the program. Our program had been built up. They got into Final Four I think the year before we got there. So the program was there, and then our freshman year, it came apart, but for us, I think I’m proud that we stayed. We both had opportunities to leave and go other places. There are definitely opportunities for us to have separated or not followed the same path, but to stick together and to be able to come out of there, not only with the national championship and with the degrees and the ability to move through our career paths the way we have, but, again, developing those skills and that leadership and having all those experiences together, I think, again is the reason I’m at Stephanie’s house or here now that we still stay in contact.

For me, it’s not just proud of what we’ve accomplished on the court, but the connection off the court and knowing that when I go through a life experience or have something, whether it’s something to laugh about or something to cry about, I’ve got Stephanie that I can contact and I know she knows she’s got me and we’ve got some other people within that group that we can always rely on. Then going back just overall as Purdue to what I was saying about Neil Armstrong, it’s like people like him who have this tremendous name and notoriety around the world, for him to reach out to a women’s basketball player and on a team that … Like I said, we hadn’t done anything. Honestly, I think I maybe played or started 10 games the year before, and most people at the time didn’t even know if we were going to have enough players our sophomore year to have a team.

So for him to do that, you look at what Drew Breeze, Coach Peck mentioned, Drew was there during our time and he knew the importance of the academic center and for him and Brittany to give back and do what they’ve done for Purdue, for Brian Cardinal and Danielle Bird or Cardinal to give back. So it’s like I feel the pride in knowing we have a community of givers and people who a lot of us may not have been the people that everybody expected to win or the people … Drew, if you look at Drew’s stature compared to other quarterbacks, nobody was expecting him to have the career he did, but he was able to do it, and both at Purdue and professionally.

So I think for me, it’s that sense of pride. Like Steph said, everywhere I go when I wear Purdue, it’s like in the airport. I think I was in Hawaii one time, and it’s funny because people are like, “Man, you know people everywhere,” and I’m like, “Well,” like Steph said, it’s like if people followed Purdue Sports at all, we’re the national champs, and so people will remember us or remember who we are. So it’s pretty cool to go as you travel the world or travel around to have those Purdue connections

Kate Young:

What are their next giant leaps? Here’s Ukari.

Ukari Figgs:

I think over the past few years, I think I’ve grown a lot both personally and professionally, and there’s a lot of things that for me, I grew up in a community. People say I’m from Georgetown, but I grew up in a smaller community called New Zion. That’s a really family-oriented area. How I grew up and how my family raised me is much is given, much is required. I feel like I’ve been blessed beyond measure for just where I am in life, the things that I have and maybe even some of the skillsets or talents that I have. I’m really passionate and have been motivated to try to use those in other ways to help and benefit other people.

So that’s probably something this year that I’m putting as a big item for me to move forward. I’ve had some ideas there out there, so I don’t want to say what they are, but I will be doing some of that giving back that I said the Purdue community as well I think is probably known for.

Kate Young:

Here’s Stephanie.

Stephanie White:

I think that’s tough when we’re still so trying to accomplish things now, whether it be coaching for me or continuing to climb the ladder from a broadcasting standpoint, but I would say personally, the next great leap is just with my children and my family. I have all boys. I want my boys to be allies. I want them to champion women. I want them to be leaders who are inclusive and who are accepting and who challenge social norms and who think for themselves, who use critical thinking and who challenge ideas. We’ve got a lot of yes people in the world. I only want them to say yes when I ask them to clean their room, but I think hopefully raising strong independent men who are champions for equality. That’s what I would love my legacy to be as a parent, and that’s something that as my kids have gotten older, that I’ve started to really take to heart.

I’m not going to coach forever. Hopefully, I’m not going to work forever, but the impact and the experiences that my boys get to have because of what I do allows them to be surrounded by strong women, by lots of diversity, and I want them to take those experiences and help make the world a better place. To me, that’s my next great leap.

Kate Young:

I can’t thank you both enough for joining us. It was a blast. You all were the three friends, but I felt like I was included.

Stephanie White:

Of course, you are. Absolutely, absolutely.

Kate Young:

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We can’t thank Coach Peck, Stephanie, and Ukari enough for their time. If you want to experience firsthand the camaraderie, friendship, and Boilermaker spirit between these three women, be sure to go to our This is Purdue YouTube page, youtube.com/@ThisisPurdue, and be sure to hit that subscribe button while you’re there so you never miss an episode.

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Ted Schellenberger. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast distribution strategy is led by Teresa Walker and Carly Eastman. Our podcast photography for this episode is thanks to Purdue Athletics. Our podcast design is led by Caitlyn Freville. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotion is managed by Megan Hoskins and Kirsten Bowman. Additional writing assistance is led by Sophie Ritz. Our This is Purdue intern is Caroline Kime, and special thanks to our team’s athletics expert, Tom Schott. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review, and as always, boiler up.