It's home sweet home for Stucky

Richard Anderson photo
Wyoming assistant coach Jill Stucky gets ready to run a drill earlier this season.

By Richard Anderson
Wyoming Sports.org

For Jill Stucky, home is where the heart is. Her heart is with her family, the University of Wyoming and Laramie.

The former Cowgirl volleyball star in the mid 1990s, then known as Jill Jones, always felt an attachment with the state and Laramie. She was born and lived her first 12 years in Sheridan, before moving to Kansas. She then came back to play for the Cowgirls, while her family -- father Darrell Jones and mother Joann Jones, returned to Laramie to live. Her brother, Jeremy Jones, is a local chiropractor.

Now married to husband Kyle, the Stucky’s have two small girls, ages 3 and 4½. When the opportunity came to come back and be an assistant on first-year head coach Carrie Yerty’s staff, it was a no-brainer.

“As I progressed in my coaching career, obviously at some point you get married, you have kids and you realize that there is more to life than just coaching,” Stucky said. “My family fortunately moved from Goodland, Kan., to back here. It just seemed like a wonderful opportunity to have grandparents around to help me raise my kids.”

She said this move was all about her being a better coach because she can now be a better mother.

“Before, I always felt like I was stealing time from one of my important jobs -- coaching or mothering -- to do the other job,” she said. “Here, I can do the thing that I love, coaching volleyball, and I can do my most important job, which is being a mother and a good wife. I feel completely well-rounded here; this is where I am supposed to be.”

There is a fine line of being a coach and a parent and along with her mother, father and brother, Stucky credits her husband, a teacher at Rock River, for being the glue of their immediate family.

“I have a wonderful husband who is a great dad,” Stucky said.

When Stuckey walked in the UniWyo Sports Complex for the first time to begin two-a-days in early August, she said she knew that she was home.

“The smell of the gym, it just felt right,” she said. “I have all of the support that I could possibly have here. It feels like I have come full circle in the best way that I could have.”

Stucky came to then head coach Mike English’s camp in high school and left with a scholarship. By the time she was a junior with the Cowgirls, she said she knew that she wanted to become a coach.

“I would spend time with my coaches and I realized that their job is an exciting and interesting job, and a job where you don’t have to do the same thing every day …. something new all of the time,” she said. “So I started putting a little resume together.”

Stucky called an acquaintance in Kansas, Ray Bechard, who was the coach at Barton Community College in Kansas to be a reference. He gave her a job instead and she moved to Kansas with Bechard the next year. She spent 10 years in Lawrence, before coming back to Laramie.
Stucky would go on to play for three coaches at UW -- English, Beth Kuwata and Susan Steadman. She helped the Cowgirls go to their last NCAA Tournament under Kuwata in 1994.

Stucky said she went from being a big fish to a puppy her freshman year at Wyoming, but then grew as a player with the help of her coaches. She would leave Wyoming among the leaders in several statistical categories and still is 13th in kills, seventh in service aces and 13th in digs.
She credits the coaching she received as a Cowgirl.

“I remember the coaching staff being so supportive of me and helping me grow as an athlete,” she said. “At the time, it was Mike English and his assistant was Carolyn Eide. I just remember Carolyn standing next to me, helping me with my worst skill, which was blocking, and just being on me the whole time. I remember her always being extremely positive and I remember her helping me grow as a player.

“I learned a lot of different coaching styles. I learned what I really liked about the staffs. Mike English would explain a skill, and not only would he explain a skill, he would explain why it is important and how you can use it. We had a full understanding of what to do with the ball when to came to us.”

With all of her experiences, Stucky said she learned who she wanted to be as a coach and who she didn’t want to be. She also credits then strength coach Jim Lathrop for guiding her coaching philosophy.

“He said, ‘the most important thing and wherever you go, if you are always yourself, then that’s the best coach that you can be.’ I’ve tried to carry that with me.”

She also tries to carry that philosophy down to her players.

“I fully believe that if the girls on the team know who I am and know what I am all about, they will buy in and they will play for me,” she said. “They’ll understand what I want and understand what I need from them and what I need out of my own life. They will appreciate that as they grow as adults themselves.”

Yerty calls Stucky a walking billboard for the University of Wyoming.

“Not only is she a wonderful role model and mentor for the young women, but she is remembered as a player here, she was a captain of her team her senior year, and she is a fabulous recruiter,” Yerty said. “I think the city of Laramie, they remember Jill, and I’m not stupid, I brought her back because I definitely think she can help our program go to another level.”

Stucky remembers the glory days of Wyoming volleyball and knows what it will take to get those days back. Although the young Cowgirl team is just 1-8, she said they already have the ball rolling as the team has bought in with everything they have asked of them. More importantly, she said they realize that they do love the sport of volleyball.

“With the kids buying in, every time we bring a recruit in, the team is so excited to tell them about how great the program is, how much they like the coaching staff and how the team is going to great places,” she said. “It’s just changing the attitude within our own home. When the girls realize that the players really love this and they appreciate this, we end up getting kids who are bigger, faster, stronger and our program develops from there.”

Stucky said that she also appreciates the fact that as her own girls grow up, they are going to have the opportunity to see strong, beautiful athletic women succeed in life.

“It is really important that I have good role models for my daughters,” she said. “Me staying in this profession automatically provides them with 12 to 15 of those role models all year that they can get to know, learn to love and model themselves after.”

Last weekend, the Cowgirls opened their home season going 1-2 against Kansas, Alabama-Birmingham and Cleveland State. Ironically, she scheduled the home-and-home series between KU and Wyoming two years ago, not knowing she would be returning.

Seeing the large and enthusiastic crowd cheer on the Cowgirls Saturday night brought her back.

“It made me feel so proud of where I came from, who I am and what I have become now again as a Wyoming Cowgirl,” she said.

Stucky is truly home again. It’s a home she said she hopes her husband and girls can love as much as she does.

“I am so unbelievably happy to be home. If it lasts forever, I would be as happy as I could be,” Stucky said.