STALLARD: Tommy Aldridge simply wanted the best for his players
Published 9:50 am Tuesday, March 10, 2026
The first time I met Tommy Aldridge, I thought he was a jerk.
I’m pretty sure he thought the same thing about me, and to be honest, he was more right than I was.
Aldridge, the legendary Longview High School basketball coach who died this past Friday at the age of 79, had brought another one of his strong Lady Lobo basketball teams down to Lufkin for a district game.
The Lady Lobos were riding lengthy district winning streak and had beaten Lufkin by 36, 60, 32 and 17 points in the four times I had seen them play in my first two seasons covering Lufkin as sports editor of the Lufkin Daily News.
Lufkin, in what was the program’s biggest win at the time, defeated the Lady Lobos that night 36 years ago. The excitement level, as you can imagine, was through the roof at Panther Gymnasium.
I thought it would be great if I got a few comments from the opposing coach, maybe even some kind words about how well Lufkin played.
Aldridge had other ideas.
“We didn’t play Lady Lobo basketball. It’ll be different when they come to Longview,” Aldridge said.
I walked away from that postgame meeting thinking the state championship and all of the district championships Aldridge had already won since starting the Lady Lobo basketball program back in 1978 had turned him into an egotistical jerk.
I couldn’t have been more wrong if I had gone off to a fancy college somewhere and majored in Wrong.
Aldridge wasn’t a great coach – an eventual Hall of Fame coach – because of the more than 900 wins, 25 district championships and 19 30-win seasons he compiled over the years.
He was a great coach because he simply refused to let himself or his players settle for anything but their best efforts. He demanded it from himself and his players, and wasn’t afraid to let them – or anyone else – know when the standards he built the Lady Lobo program on weren’t met.
That’s not ego or being a jerk. That’s being a coach.
“Sometimes TA got a bad rap for how we would score against opponents or how he coached, but to him it was never about the score or the opponent,” former player and current Whitehouse coach Meagan Leggett said. “He just wanted to win. That meant every possession, every single play on offense and defense. It was never about how bad he wanted to beat someone. He just wanted us to be our best. That’s the way we practiced, and because of that, when we stepped on the floor we believed we would win. Unless you played for him or truly knew him, you didn’t understand his level of drive and passion. It wasn’t about him or his ego. He was helping us understand the life lessons basketball could teach us.”
Leggett is one of the 65 players who signed college scholarships after playing for Aldridge. Longview was 67-5 during her time as a Lady Lobo, and she went on to coach at the college level before eventually returning to spend two years as the Lady Lobos’ head coach – compiling a 48-19 record during that span.
At Whitehouse, she’s 49-14 over two seasons, including a 36-1 record this past year.
“TA left such a mark on all of his players as far as life lessons the game can teach,” Leggett said. “He may be gone, but those lessons will carry on in his players forever. The things he taught us, we now teach our own children. I’m so glad I had the opportunity to experience his passion, his work ethic and his drive.”
I left Lufkin in the fall of 1997 to join the sports staff at the Longview News-Journal, and covered the Lady Lobos and Aldridge starting with the 1998 season until he left Longview to coach at his alma mater – Union Grove.
His Longview teams went 908-180, and he was 59-33 at Union Grove – retiring with an overall record of 967-213.
When I first started covering the Lady Lobos during the 1998-1990 season, I didn’t think Aldridge remembered our previous meeting down in Lufkin.
I was wrong again.
After the first Lady Lobo game I covered for the Longview News-Journal, I shook his hand and was about to ask him a question when he asked “You’re not going to ask me about the other team, are you?”
I paused for a few seconds, not exactly sure what to say, when he finally broke the tension by giving me a big smile and firm hand shake.
We had a great working relationship for the rest of his career, and became good friends after he retired.
We were even close enough for me to ask him once about that first meeting down in Lufkin, and sure enough, it’s just like former player Meagan Leggett said.
“Jack,” Aldridge said. “All I could do was coach my team and let the other coach do the same. I never really cared about the score. If we played well, I didn’t always show it on the outside, but I was happy. If we didn’t play like I knew we were capable of playing, everyone knew it.”
That includes a jerk sports writer from an opposing newspaper who went on to gain a remarkable amount of respect for a coach who simply wanted his players to believe in themselves like he believed in them.
— Jack Stallard is sports editor of the News-Journal. Email: jack.stallard@news-journal.com
