Great athletes have been here all the time in Atlanta, but the gap from good players to OK players was wide. Programs to train and teach girls to compete at a high level started to rise, becoming a big business in Atlanta. Quality programs, led by coaches who love to train these girls and help them improve their skills, began to emerge. Girls’ self-esteem and leadership thrive with structure from a team, a program and personal training.
Our program started nine years ago. I had played at Gardner-Webb University, and my daughter signed with Tennessee Tech. Based at Pace Academy, I started working with girls to develop their basketball, academic and social skills with the idea to help under-served girls get into schools like Pace. Our program has had 42 girls sign with schools like Vanderbilt, Virginia and Harvard and Princeton. Former Pace guard Kaitlyn Dinkins now captains Harvard’s team.
Atlanta always has players rated in the top 50 in the country, so coaches gravitate here. The Rolodex on my phone has 200 coaches. Atlanta is a hotbed for women’s basketball recruiting. The recruiting is intensive, and it’s gotten even more so in the last few years. I know of eighth-graders who have been offered Division I scholarships. It’s competitive and exciting.
At any NCAA certified events here or with Atlanta teams competing, coaches will see a diamond in the rough. Northern Kentucky saw the athleticism and speed of one of our players, a virtually unknown girl from Savannah, 5-foot-11, and signed her. The same thing happened for a 6-foot power forward from Pickens County. We have many stories of girls who, in one summer, focused themselves on achieving a goal playing at the NCAA level, got the exposure, took a college visit and signed.
Because we now have a pipeline into college programs, I tell the players that they must continue their work ethic in college because what they do impacts their “little sisters” in our program now who want to get recruited. I never want to hear a college coach say that they were disappointed in a girl from our program.
They say there’s something in the water in Atlanta as it relates to female student-athletes, and I believe the next years will continue to show that as well.
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