Hall of Fame
“I have three brothers, and I went to watch their games all my life. That was why I got into sports,” Lisa (Scott) Gray said. “When we would come home after watching their games, we would roll up socks and bounce them off the wall into the lampshades.”
This strange after game activity began a fascination with basketball that has led Gray into producing record breaking statistics and led her into becoming a member of the second class of the California’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
Gray started her basketball career at Butler High School where she set the school record with 32 rebounds in one game. She also participated in track while in high school, breaking the records in both the high and triple jumps.
“My high school team had a lot of talent. Four of our five starters went o to play in college,” Gray explained. “As a matter of fact, one of my best friends (Lisa Zitalone-Olson) went to Clarion, and I got her to transfer and play at California.”
Jean Condo, the women’s basketball coach at the time, was the one who contacted Gray the most and helped her decided to come to Cal to play basketball.
“I could have gone to Slippery Rock or Pitt-Johnstown, but I went down to California, walked around and liked the campus,” Gray said. “California recruited me, but I didn’t get any money to go.”
Gray, a four year starter, made an impact on the Lady Vulcan team immediately.
In her freshman year, she was voted team MVP, led the team in rebounding with 231 and was second in scoring with 252 points. As a sophomore. Gray rewrote the record books by scoring 38 points in an unforgettable game against West Virginia University.
Gray was the team’s top scorer and a Pennwood West all-star in her junior year.
Even though Gray said that the most memorable event at California was the game high 38 points, her senior year also produced many more moments that equal that earlier success.
Gray led the team in scoring and field goal and free-throw percentages. She also was the number three rebounder for the Lady Vulcans.
But Gray’s statistic that stands out the most is the 1,416 points that she ended her career with, which still ranks her third on the all-time scoring list.
Although Gray’s statistics may be impressive, she said that the team as a whole wasn’t.
“We had a lot good people, but we never pulled it together,” Gray said. “We didn’t have good coaching. My last year at Cal State, we did better than we ever did.”
Being a member of the basketball team did give some of its players chances to do things that they would normally not be able to do though.
“We got to go to Miami for a big tournament. They (California) paid our way, and we were in Disney World for New Year’s Eve,” Gray said. “It was nice because some people on the team would have never got to do that if it wasn’t for basketball.”
With all of Gray’s successes at Cal, it seems obvious why she was selected to be a member of the hall of fame. That is, to everyone, but her.
“I have no idea why they chose me to be inducted into the hall of fame. I was good when I played there, but there have been people that are better,” Gray admitted. “It has been so long since I have been that, and I can’t believe that they remembered me. It is nice to be recognized, though.
“In high school we had three or four people who were all really good, and one or two of them got all of the attention. I was the rebounder, and one girl shot all of the time,” Gray continued. “When I went to Cal State, I got to do more of the shooting for a change, and it is an honor to be finally recognized for what I did.”
Lisa Scott-Gray was an outstanding women's basketball post-player from 1979 through 1983. She finished her career as the school's all-time leading scorer with 1,476 career points, and is still among all Lady Vulcan scorers in school history. Scott accumulated 1,190 of these points during her final three seasons and averaged 17.4 points and 10.4 rebounds a game. As a junior, Scott led the Lady Vulcans to an 18-13 overall record and appearance in the AIAW Mid-Atlantic Regional, the first post season appearance ever for Cal women's basketball. A four-year starter, Scott averaged more than 10 points a game each of her seasons and was also Cal's top scorer each of those seasons. As a sophomore, Scott set a single-game school-record with 38 points against Division I West Virginia.
Scott earned many post-season honors from the Pennwood West Conference, PSAC and ECAC. She was also the team MVP in 1981 and 1983.
Originally from Butler, PA, and a graduate of Butler High School, Scott still resides in her hometown and for the past 12 years has been employed as a credit and collection representative with the Servistar Corporation. Scott and her husband, Jim Gray, have one daughter, Lauren Elizabeth.
