Since the time she was in middle school, Marlene Stollings had planned for the day she’d be a Division I head basketball coach.
That’s why the stationery at Winthrop had as little a chance as the training wheels on her first bike did.
Stollings has roared into the Winthrop basketball program, changing the clothes, the habits and the expectations. She’s done it in the same driven manner that made her the top scorer in Ohio high school history (boys or girls), and she won’t apologize for it.
“I’ve been thinking about this for many years,” Stollings said of her approach to her first college head coaching job. “I’ve worked for five different head coaches as an assistant, and you pick something up from everyone you’ve been around. but I’ve formed my own way of doing things.
“We’re pretty real around here. We are who we are. There’s not going to be a lot of BS around this program. We’ll show them who we are.”
Stollings came to Winthrop this spring after an four-year run as an associate head coach at Ole miss. and as soon as she walked in the door, she began making changes small and large to a program that had settled a bit under former coach Bud Childers.
The changes were immediate. Practices were moved to the evenings, to replicate the game-day timing. Hip-hop music blares during the first segment of practice, getting players used to the kind of atmospheres they’ll see this winter in opposing gyms.
And then they run. Unsuccessful drills early in the year are punished with “touches,” length-of-the-floor sprints that have to be completed in a prescribed time. when players were huffing and puffing in one early practice, Stollings barked that the 12 they just did were six trips up and down the court, or about 90 seconds worth of game time. “We’re not going to be winded in a minute and a half,” she said.
“It was a little bit of a transition,” sophomore point guard Dequesha McClanahan said of the new boss. “Practices are definitely different. Everything’s different. That took some getting used to.
“At the same time, we’ve embraced it, because we know it’s going to help us in the long run.”
And setting the program up for the long run is clearly Stollings’ goal, and she’s getting down to the finest details to achieve it.
In an attempt to build a student section at her games, she’s dipping into her own pocket for a bounty. Students who attend all three games of this weekend’s Winthrop Classic will be entered into a drawing, and the winner gets free books for the spring semester.
But you have to attend all three, and she’s not giving away the books until the final media timeout of the final game of the weekend.
That’s just one of the many differences. she changed travel schedules. she ordered new T-shirts for players to wear after practice. she ordered new letterhead to send recruiting letters on.
If the results were going to change, everything around her had to as well.
“That stuff is huge to me,” Stollings said. “I’m big on presenting this program in the best light possible. I want to give people the perception of what we’re all about. every detail, every piece of mail that goes out of here is going to be first class.
“When I was in seventh grade, I knew I wanted to be a coach. So I’ve paid very, very close attention over the years to coaches. how they dress, how they speak, how they handle themselves. All that matters, and I’ve tried to model my behavior after them.”
Stollings said the first question about any coach is one of philosophy, whether leadership is innate or can be learned.
“I think you’re either born with it or not,” she said.
Of course, it doesn’t take a long look at her background to know Stollings wouldn’t and won’t be deterred in her pursuit.
Growing up “in the country,” of Pike County, Ohio, entertainment options were rare. So when she got off the bus from kindergarten, she’d race to the family garage, what she called “the one paved place anywhere around me.”
In the time before her father returned from work, she’d ride her hand-me-down bike (her older brother’s old BMX) through the garage so she could get rid of the training wheels she hated so.
Darin Gantt 803-326-4312
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