• Played in three National Championships and was named All-Canadian on all three occasions.
• Pandas’ team captain and team MVP, and finished her career as the Pandas' second highest all-time point scorer.
• Bakewell Trophy winner as U of A's most outstanding female athlete in 1981.
• Head coach at Grant MacEwan College, the University of Lethbridge, and the University of Alberta (1991-2005), also coaching several national teams.
• Coached the first ever CIS National Championship team (1999) and received the National 3M Coach of the Year award the same year.
Trix Baker is one of the most outstanding student athletes to ever wear the green and gold of the Panda Basketball Program. Following graduation from Stettler’s William E. Hay Composite High School where she competed in basketball, track and field, volleyball and badminton. Trix journeyed north to Edmonton and enrolled at the University of Alberta in the autumn of 1976. With basketball as her chosen sport, she was successful in making the team and played in the Panda’s basketball program for five years.
At 6’1”, Trix was able to help the team to compete in three national championships. During her five seasons as a Panda, Trix was named an All-Canadian three times, played in three national championship tournaments (1977, 1980, and 1981), and when she retired in 1981, was the all-time leading scorer in Panda basketball history. Thirty years later she still holds the Panda record for the highest single season points per game average - 19.0. Trix finished her playing career with an overall 14.3 points per game scoring average, an outstanding .533 field goal shooting percentage, 871 rebounds, and in her final year topped the single season Panda records for points (380) and rebounds (261). She remains, in 2010, the program’s second highest scorer.
While a Panda, Trix was selected as the team’s co-captain for three seasons and was named the recipient of the Ruby Anderson Trophy as the team’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) in her last three seasons. In her final year of play, 1980-’81, she was selected winner of the Bakewell Trophy as the University of Alberta’s Most Outstanding Female Athlete. Although her playing career preceded the establishment of the CIS Academic All-Canadian program Trix Baker carried a first class academic average in her final two years as a player.
Her love of coaching was impetus for her to enroll in the Master of Arts degree program in sports psychology during her fifth year of eligibility. With her course work completed and only her thesis remaining, Trix entered the world of post-secondary coaching. She worked full-time as the head coach of the Grant MacEwan Griffins Women’s team while also coaching provincial and national teams in the off-season. She coached Alberta’s Junior Women’s Basketball Team for five summers – 1986 to 1989 and again in 1996. She also served as an assistant coach of Canada’s National Women’s Basketball Team from 1993 to 1995 and from 1997 to 1999, working with such well-known head coaches as Bev Smith, Kathy Shields, Peter Ennis and Wayne Hussey. Her ambition, however, was to coach at the university level.
This dream was realized when, in 1987, she was selected as the Head Coach of the Women’s Program at the University of Lethbridge. She coached the Pronghorns until 1991 when the University of Alberta invited her to return to her alma mater and the Pandas as their Head Coach. For the next fifteen years she led the team through many excellent seasons including their first-ever Canadian championship in 1998-’99. Her success as a coach was recognized by several groups across Canada when she won the Canada West Coach of the Year Award (1999), a National 3M Coach of the Year Award (1999) and an Alberta Coaching Recognition Award (2000). Trix stepped down as the Panda’s Head Coach after the 2005-2006 season but her influence continues to be felt as the players she has coached and mentored are now playing and/or coaching at all levels across Canada.
In 1984 Trix married Doug Baker, a former outstanding Golden Bear basketball player for three seasons, and they have a son, Jordan. Jordan, like his parents, now plays basketball at the University of Alberta and in his first season (2009-’10) was named as the Canada West Rookie of the Year.
The strength and depth of the Panda basketball program is owed a major debt to the sustained contributions made by Trix Baker both as a player and as a coach. She has helped to build the University’s reputation for student athlete excellence. The University of Alberta is proud to add her name to the Sports Wall of Fame.
