UWEC Athletics Hall of Fame
Vanessa Schley was the 2001 conference Player of the Year in basketball. Schley started 58 consecutive games and came up just three points shy of 1,000 points in a three-year Blugold career after transferring from UW-River Falls. Schley, a prep standout at Gilman, played her first two Blugold seasons for Hall of Fame coach Lisa Stone and finished her final season with current coach Tonja Englund. Schley led the conference in scoring in 2001 with a 17.1 average en route to conference Player of the Year honors after earning All-Conference recognition for a second consecutive year. She led the Blugolds as they won eight of their final nine conference games to tie UW-Oshkosh for the league title in 2001. The competitive league saw five teams finish at either 12-4 or 11-5. The Blugolds then rolled through the conference tournament with three straight wins for the title. Schley was also a starter on the 1999-00 team that went 16-0 in conference play and won its first 28 games before losing the season finale to Washington University which was in the midst of claiming three consecutive NCAA Division III championships. Wash U was also the team that ended the Blugolds’ season when Schley was a senior.
During Schley’s three seasons in Eau Claire, the Blugolds were 74-12 overall, 41-7 in conference play and 8-1 in conference tournament games. She was the only Wisconsin player under consideration for Kodak All-American in 2001. She was MVP of the Thanksgiving Showcase which the Blugolds won in 2000 and All-Tournament in the 8-team Marymount University (VA) Tournament. The Blugolds lost the championship of that tourney to the host school by a single point. She set what was then a Blugold school single game scoring record with 36 points against conference co-champion Oshkosh on the Titans’ home court in 2001.
Schley earned her UWEC degree in psychology in 2001, then obtained a master’s degree in education and a specialist degree in school psychology at UW-Stout. She spent two years as a school psychologist in the Unity School District in Balsam Lake and at the time of her induction had been a school psychologist in the Eau Claire school district at North High School since 2005. At the time of her induction, she and her husband Dan were the parents of three children.
