Batesville native Lisa C. Lewis  honored as outstanding coach

By Rita Howell

Batesville native Lisa Lewis, a teacher and volleyball coach at Collierville (Tenn.) High School, was honored last week with the Commercial Appeal’s Albert C. Dunning Achievement Award.
The award was presented last Friday night at the Best of the Preps ceremony which recognized outstanding high school athletes and coaches from schools in the Memphis area.
Lewis, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Doyle Collier of Batesville, recently retired from a 30-year teaching and coaching career.

Lewis won 654 matches in her career and was 427-176 at Collierville, where she coached the Dragons to AAA state tournament berths in eight of the last ten years, including a runner-up finish in 2004.

The Dunning award is named in honor of the late sports editor of The Commercial Appeal and is given to an individual or school/group that displays special athletic achievement.
Lewis has organized an annual volleyball tournament, drawing 24 teams from across Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, with the proceeds benefiting four college scholarships.
The tournament honors the memory of Anelda Carter, Lewis’ colleague at CHS, who died in 2006 of cancer. Carter was a history teacher, and the scholarships go to students studying history in college.

Last year the school lost two students to untimely deaths. Trey Erwin died of cancer and Courtney Shefield was killed in an automobile accident. Proceeds from the tournament funded scholarships in Courtney’s name and a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Trey’s name.

Lewis is a 1975 graduate of West Panola Academy (predecessor of North Delta School) where she played basketball.

“Sometimes people ask me how and why I got into volleyball coaching and not basketball,” Lewis said. “Largely it was because my first coaching job in 1982 at Skyview Academy was head volleyball coach. I had two players three years later who were recruited and played Division 1 ball at Ole Miss and I just saw the sport growing and really loved it.”

Though Lewis is hanging up her coach’s whistle, she’s accepted a position with a Memphis based computer company as an alliance operations specialist.