June 29, 1999

Lafayette College announced today that LaRonda Murphy will become the new assistant women's basketball coach for the upcoming 1999-2000 season. Murphy will serve as the first assistant to head coach Pat Fisher, who is entering her 20th season at Lafayette.

LaRonda is an outstanding recruiter and has a great networking system," said Fisher who is excited about Murphy accepting the position. "She is very personable and will relate well to the student-athletes."

Murphy comes to Lafayette after spending the last four seasons with the Fairleigh Dickinson University women's basketball program as an assistant. At Fairleigh Dickinson, Murphy was responsible for working with both post and guard players, recruiting and scouting activities for the program, and served as director of operations for the college's girl's summer basketball camp.

Before coaching at FDU, Murphy spent two seasons as a graduate assistant at Eastern Michigan University, working with post players as well as scouting, and performing academic monitoring of student-athletes.

While at Eastern Michigan, she also served as a career advising intern, providing career advice for students, working with them on their resumes and developing a career resources library for other advisers.

Murphy graduated from Saginaw Valley State with a bachelor of business administration degree in 1992. While at Saginaw, she served as captain of the women's basketball team and was also a student-assistant coach. She went on to earn a master of arts degree in college student personnel from Eastern Michigan in 1995, while serving on the graduate school student advisory committee and as an academic advising assistant, in addition to her duties as a graduate assistant coach.