It doesn’t take much to understand what well-funded athletic programs look like. Athletes wear state of the art uniforms and equipment. Football and baseball fields look pristine because of private lawn services. Athletic facilities have great lighting, comfortable seats and top of the line nutritional options for the student athletes.
There may be a connection between these types of opulence and success in competition, but there’s never a guarantee. One great example of where great coaching and athletic talent achieve great things in spite of not having the most desirable resources is Mississippi Delta Community College women’s basketball. On Saturday, the MDCC Lady Trojans lost in the Region 23 final to Itawamba Community College 83-65. The number five seeded Lady Trojans upset number one Pearl River Community to reach the final.
This unexpected championship game appearance may have surprised many, but not those of us who have gotten to know what skill set Head Coach Tangela Banks brings to the table. For me, it is part on a narrative of winning that has been building during her six-year tenure. Coach Banks came to MDCC having won three state championships at the high school level.
I met Coach Banks about three years ago when I was the publisher at Indianola’s Enterprise-Tocsin. I was covering a summer basketball camp at MDCC and had done some research about her 2022 incoming freshman class players. Excitement was the reaction when I realized that she had recruited the top two players from Greenville High, Leland High and Simmons that year. I had covered these young players all the way through their high school careers.
Banks was a stickler for players understanding their spatial responsibilities on the court and knowing their assignments in both offensive and defensive schemes. Players who were not willing to buy into this system of high accountability saw their playing time suffer. In fact, much to my surprise that year, a couple of bona fide former high school stars never saw meaningful game action because of this.
Coach Banks ability to translate the Xs and Os into winning basketball speaks to the culture of a school that has always done more with less. I witnessed this back in 1993 as the editor for the school newspaper when the football team won the Community College National Championship and subsequently sent players to Division I programs like Ole Miss, Florida State, Mississippi State and even to the NFL. A couple of my classmates back then got drafted by the Cincinnati Reds and Houston Astros, respectively in baseball.
Today, athletic director Jason Conner is the school’s hardest working administrator, biggest cheerleader and staunchest advocate for bringing the school’s athletic facilities into the 21st Century.
Even though they give many of the nation’s best and brightest professionals a great start, community college sports are at disadvantage when it comes to resources, publicity and support. Many tend to identify with their bachelor’s degree granting college, follow their teams and support those institutions. Therefore, I thought I’d use my platform to acknowledge great coaching, a tremendous framework for future athletic success and a place that will always be dear to me.
Patrick Ervin is a long time contributor to the Delta Democrat-Times
