Eastern Washington University Athletics

Nancy Taucher, now Sugerman, earned first team All-Big Sky Conference honors in both 1991 and 1992, and is one of just three players in EWU basketball history (through the 2023-24 season) to have at least 1,000 points and 300 assists in their careers. She played in every game for Eastern from 1989-92, a total of 109 games that included starts in her last 95 contests.
 
Taucher’s career total of 341 assists ranked fourth in school history at the time and is currently eighth through the 2023-24 season. Her 1,105 career points were seventh then and are now 13th (through 2023-24), and her percentages of .332 from the 3-point line and .717 from the free throw line ranked third and fourth, respectively. Besides her all-league honors as a junior and senior, all four seasons she earned Big Sky Conference All-Academic honors (1989, 1990, 1991, 1992).
 
Taucher averaged 38.67 minutes per game in 1991, which still stands as a school record through the 2023-24 season. She is still one of only five players in school history through the 2023-24 season to have had 400 points and 100 assists in the same season (1991), and in 1992 she averaged 13.7 points, 4.8 rebounds and 3.9 assists to rank as one of only 11 EWU players to have averaged 10/4/3 in the same season (through 2023-24).
 
She closed her career by averaging 13.7 points, 3.9 assists and 4.8 rebounds in 29 games, sinking 30.1 percent of her 3-point attempts (34-of-113) and overall shooting 38.8 percent from the field and 67.9 percent from the line. In her junior season she averaged 15.4 points in 27 games, plus had 103 assists (3.8) and 76 rebounds (3.6). She started all 27 games in the 1989-90 season and averaged 7.1 points, 3.0 assists and 3.5 boards, and as a freshman she started 12 of 26 games and averaged 4.0 points, 1.8 assists and 2.0 rebounds.
 
She played on EWU teams which were 41-68 overall and 25-39 in four seasons under Bill Smithpeters, with one Big Sky Conference Tournament appearance. Only four teams advanced to the conference championship, and that tourney berth came in 1990 during her sophomore season. Eastern returned to Taucher’s home state of Montana to play perennial league power Montana, and lost 72-61 in Missoula.
 
Taucher graduated from Wolf Point, Mont., High School in 1988, where she was an All-State athlete in three sports (basketball, track & field). She led Wolf Point’s basketball team to the state title and was tournament MVP, and in track and field she was a state champ in the triple jump. She married former Whitworth men’s basketball player Ken Sugarman in 1993, and they now reside in the Boise area. They have two grown sons, Johnny (born in 2003) and Eli (2006).
 
Ken and Nancy returned in the 1990’s to play in Hoopfest, a 3-on-3 tournament in downtown Spokane, and played on a winning team together in the co-ed division. Ken would go on to win multiple championships in the open division. Ken was a standout high school player at Highland High School near Yakima, Wash., and went on to a 30-year coaching career, including different stints as as women’s and men’s head coach at The Master’s College in California. His father, Ken Sugarman Sr., was a standout football player at Whitworth before getting drafted in the seventh round by the Baltimore Colts and playing nine seasons as an All-Star recipient and Grey Cup champion in the Canadian Football League.
 
 
 

Nancy Kuiper - Athlete/Track & Field

 
Becoming the first Eastern female athlete to compete in the NCAA Track and Field Championships, Nancy Kuiper qualified both indoors and outdoors in 1991 to cap a record-breaking career. She was a four-time Big Sky champion in the shot put and two-time champ in the discus, winning a pair of titles at EWU after transferring from Boise State where she won four championships. She was the Field Athlete of the Meet in 1991 outdoors when she won the league’s shot put and discus titles for EWU with efforts of 50-11 and 153-1, respectively.
 
Kuiper sat out the 1990 season at EWU because of NCAA transfer rules that were in effect in that era. In winter of 1991, she had a school-record and personal-best throw of 50-11 to qualify for the NCAA Indoor Championships. She placed second in the Big Sky with a throw of 48-9 1/4 despite a jammed finger on her throwing hand. She went on to place 12th nationally with a mark of 47-2, but had she thrown her career best she would have placed seventh and earned All-America honors.
 
Outdoors, she matched her 50-11 best from the indoor season to set a school record in winning the Big Sky title despite extremely windy and stormy conditions at the championship meet in Bozeman, Mont. That mark broke her own Big Sky meet record of 47-4 set in 1988 while she was at BSU, but if fell short of the facility record held by Marcia Mecklenburg, who in 1995 would become Eastern’s head women’s track and field coach for the next 27 years. Kuiper’s career-best 50-11 mark also qualified her for a trip to the NCAA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Ore. She placed 13th with a throw of 47-3, but had she achieved her career best, she would have placed ninth.
 
Her twin 50-11 performances stood as school records indoors and outdoors for 20 years until they were broken in 2011. Both also ranked in the top six all-time in Big Sky history at the time. Entering 2024, her Eastern bests indoors and outdoors in the shot put (50-11) both rank second in school history, and her best discus throw outdoors (155-1) is eighth. Including her seasons at Boise State, Kuiper scored 50 total points at Big Sky outdoor meets. She won a pair of Big Sky Athlete of the Week honors both indoors and outdoors in 1991.
 
Outstanding academically, she was EWU’s female recipient of the prestigious Big Sky Conference Scholar-Athlete Award following the completion of her collegiate eligibility in 1991. After graduating from Eastern in 1992 with her degree in physical education, she spent the next three decades working with youth via coaching and directing several youth programs, mostly in Coulee Dam, Wash., where she grew up. She was a 1986 graduate of Lake Roosevelt High School where she was a six-time State A champion in the shot put and discus.