LSU Gold

Lisa Jackson Season 2023-24

LSU
Lisa Jackson
Title
Assistant Coach
Email
ljackson@lsu.edu

2007 Southwest Regional Assistant Coach of the Year

After seven years as assistant head coach for the Lady Tigers, Lisa Jackson has become known as one of the Nation’s top assistant coaches. She has proven instrumental in the LSU women’s tennis program’s success throughout her tenure.

The Lady Tigers have made four NCAA Tournament appearances during her tenure.

Jackson has played a vital part in the Lady Tigers’ recruitment efforts as she traveled across the country and the world to secure top-notch players who will contribute to the program’s future success.

In 2010, she helped bring in a stellar recruiting class which included a pair of five-star recruits in Ariel Morton and Yvette Vlaar and 2010 ITA Junior College Player of the Year Olivia Howlett.

The prior season she helped lure five-star recruits Kaitlin Burns and Ebie Wilson and four-star prospect Keri Frankenberger to campus.

Jackson assisted in signing two top-ranked recruits, highlighted by five-star recruit and Louisiana native Whitney Wolf.

Before the 2006-07 season, Jackson, along with head coach Tony Minnis, reeled in the nation’s 17th-ranked recruiting class according to tennisrecruiting.net, which included current players Hannah Robinson, a four-star recruit out of Monroe, and Nicole Kantor, a five-star player from St. Louis.

Not only has Jackson been an outstanding recruiter for LSU, but she has also been a hands-on coach, picking up the racket and practicing with the team to help them improve. It is not odd to see Jackson at practice volleying back and forth with a player to provide them with a practice partner for the day.

Her hands-on approach helped the Lady Tigers rebound from a 12-12 season in 2005-06 to go 16-10 the following year and guide the team back to the NCAA Tournament. Because of her efforts and the team’s improvement, Jackson was awarded by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association as the 2007 Southwest Regional Assistant Coach of the Year.

Jackson has also played an intricate role in helping Minnis manage the day-to-day operations of running the program, something Jackson did when she was at UL-Lafayette. She served as the Ragin Cajuns’ associate head coach for two years before arriving at LSU.

“She was like a head coach at ULL, so she has brought that added experience of being a head coach,” Minnis commented on his assistant. “She has a lot of enthusiasm, and the work ethic she brings is a real positive for our program.”

In her first year in Lafayette, Jackson led the ULL tennis team to a 7-14 record, a vast improvement from the team’s 1-13 finish a year before. In 2005, she went even beyond that, leading the team to a 10-9 finish, its first winning season since 2001.

“I think one of the things that was so impressive and one of the major reasons I looked to hire her was what she was able to do at Lafayette,” Minnis said. “We competed against ULL the past couple years and saw the major improvement in the team and how much better they got in that short time span. I was very impressed with what she did for that program.”

Coming all the way from Johannesburg, South Africa, Jackson started her own college career at William Carey College in Gulfport, Miss. She was selected to the NAIA second-team All-America squad and was also the MVP of her team while at William Carey.

After one season she decided to transfer and made the move to the other side of Louisiana where she played for the University of Texas at Arlington for the remainder of her collegiate career. Her impressive career there included earning a top-30 national ranking in doubles, becoming a two-time recipient of the Southland Conference Player of the Year Award in 1999 and 2000 and helping her team win the Southland Conference Championship all three years.

At UT-Arlington, Jackson also earned both her bachelor’s (2001) and master’s (2003) degrees in psychology. She stayed on staff at UT-Arlington as a graduate assistant with the tennis program until earning her master’s degree.