Coaching while Black ‘is not easy’
This occasional series will highlight Black coaches at all levels of sport.
This week: WBB head coaches Delaware State’s Jazmone Turner and Maryland Eastern Shore’s Malikah Willis.
Jazmone Turner’s first season as Delaware State WBB Coach was not without its ups and downs. It also can make a coach, even one as experienced as Turner, self-question what they are doing.
“I’ll be honest with you,” she told the MSR. “It’s not easy. You kind of question what you are doing. Am I doing the right thing? Are we running the right system? Are our practice plans good enough?”
The Hornets was one of the MEAC’s youngest squads — five freshmen, four sophomores, four juniors and one senior. Soph PG Kiarra Mcelrath led DSU in scoring (13.8 ppg). Fellow soph Mahogany Cottingham (12 points a game) was second in scoring. She was featured in an earlier MSR edition for receiving the USA Basketball Foundation Award in March.
Both Mcelrath and Cottingham earned all-league honors — third team All-MEAC for Mcelrath — and both she and Cottingham were named Academic all-MEAC along with teammate Circe Rubio Remolar.
As a result, Delaware State finished 5-24 overall, 1-13 MEAC. The team suffered lopsided losses to Dayton, Cincinnati, Ole Miss and Pitt during non-conference play, and later lost to league tourney runners-up Howard in postseason play.
“The season definitely has been up and down for us,” admitted the HC.
Turner played three seasons of college ball at Muskingum University (2008-11). A torn ACL suffered during her junior year forced her to forego her final season, and she graduated in 2011.
She began coaching at the high school level, then moved to college as a graduate assistant at Ohio Valley University in 2014, where she was later named interim head coach in 2015-16.
Coppin State hired Turner in 2017, where she held several roles, including associate head coach (2017 to 2020), then as an assistant coach at Indiana State (2020-21).
At Delaware State, Turner joined the staff in 2021 and was interim HC in 2023-24 before elevating her to permanent coach for the season just passed.
Turner pointed out that during the frustrating times she relied on one of her mentors for quick advice: “They said keep doing what you are doing. Do what you believe in,” the coach recalled.
Finally, with a young squad a year older, Turner is looking optimistically for better days with the Hornets.
“We are a real young group,” concluded Turner. “This group really came together as a team [during the season]. I’m really proud of them.”
Transfer portal busy
Thousands of athletes went into the transfer portal this year — nearly 2,300 men’s basketball players and 1,500 women’s basketball players. According to the NCAA, the total number of players that entered the portal, at least in MBB, was a record number for the fourth consecutive year.
Two recent studies were conducted on the transfer portal and its findings will be explained in a future MSR sports edition.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.