The Lady Chieftains are a girls basketball team from Shiprock, New Mexico, located on the Navajo Nation.
[1] Before the hiring of Jerry Richardson, the Lady Chieftains were a losing basketball team at Shiprock High School.
[1] The year was 1987 and the Lady Chieftains did well enough to reach the state championships versus Kirtland Central.
The next year however, the Lady Chieftains came back to the state championships and in another close game, were able to defeat their rivals to become the new state champions [2] The Lady Chieftains, according to the director of Rocks with Wings essentially become one of the first events that help unite the Navajo community of Shiprock.
Richardson died after being struck in an auto accident in 1996, he was teaching at the University of Central Florida at the time.