Changing the face of coaching boys’ basketball

Ashley Hunter
ECB Publishing, Inc.

While it is common to find a male coach standing on the sidelines and issuing gameplay tactics for a girls' basketball team, it is much rarer to find a woman fulfilling that same role for a boys' varsity team.
With that in mind, it makes it all the more remarkable that Jefferson Somerset is one of the few North Floridian schools that employ a female head coach for their boys' high school basketball team.
Curry began playing sports while young.
“I started playing early, while I was still in kindergarten,” says Curry, reminiscing on playing basketball with her cousins in a park near their home. “I picked up a love for the game at that time. I just latched on to basketball and from kindergarten onto the rest of my life, I’ve been playing.”
In middle school at Carter Parramore in Quincy, Fla., Curry began playing basketball and softball before eventually dropping the latter to focus on the former.
After graduating from high school in Gadsden County, Curry attended Florida A&M University, where she eventually became the university’s career leader in 3-point shots.
Several years later, in 2012, Q’Vaunda Curry began her career as a coach; at the time, she was living in the Chicago area and was offered the chance to coach a girls' fifth-grade team girls travel basketball.
With no prior coaching experience, Curry says this position intimidated her at first - though now she laughs about it.
“They were just fifth-grade girls,” she says with a grin. “But I was nervous.”
She coached the Chicago team for one year and didn’t take another coaching position until she returned to her hometown of Quincy.
In 2014, she coached a Gadsden County girls’ team, but the coaching opportunity didn’t ‘stick’, and Curry ended up stepping away from coaching and teaching to launch her own fitness company.
It was shortly after that, Curry says, that she received a call from Jefferson Somerset.
The Somerset Charter had recently taken over the Jefferson County School District’s only public elementary, middle and high schools, and were looking for teachers to staff the classrooms.
They asked Curry to come and teach an entrepreneurship class at Jefferson Somerset, and Curry accepted the position.
Curry recalls that she’d only been at the school for a year when she was offered a chance to coach again.
Like all her other prior coaching positions, Curry coached girls - but Jefferson Somerset offered her a chance to coach a varsity team for the first time.
Third time still wasn’t the charm, though. While Curry coached the girls’ varsity team, she had no plans to return to coach the girls a second time - and that was when a position as a boys' varsity coach opened up at the school.
Though Curry was still new to the community, she says that Jefferson Somerset’s Athletic Director and JROTC commander Sgt. Terry Walker immediately offered the head coach position to her.
“I didn’t plan to take it,” Curry admits. But the more she pondered on the opportunity and realized that she had plenty of experience to give young athletes, the more Curry realized it wasn’t so crazy of an idea.
Before her, Jefferson County hadn’t had a woman head coaching varsity boys - but Curry says she wasn’t thinking about how it was a historical occasion as she accepted the offered position.
For the first time in Jefferson County history, the basketball team was led by a woman, but Curry wasn’t thinking about the shattered glass ceiling that lay around her feet,
“I’ve had male coaches my whole life,” says Curry. “For me, it just seemed like the normal thing.”
It wasn’t until after taking the coaching position that she began to reflect on the fact that coaching staff is predominantly male.
Even today, Curry says she isn’t sure if this trend is caused by social constructs or a lack of female interest in putting their name into the coaching hiring hat.
“Maybe we women just haven’t sought out those positions,” says Curry. “Maybe we were just not interested...or maybe we are overlooked. I don’t know.”
Even though she has been breaking the rules of a societal norm, Curry say that she hasn't received negativity from the school, its teachers, the athletes or the boys’ parents.
“For the most part, I’ve felt supported,” says Curry. While she knows that her hiring has not been supported by everyone, those negative voices have been drowned out by the constant support from the school faculty, parents and athletes.
Coach Curry adds that having a woman for a head coach has allowed her athletes to open up in ways they might not have, should a man be coaching the team.
“I feel like the guys talk where they wouldn’t have talked so freely,” she adds.
While she’s their coach, she’s also been a “Team Mom” for the boys in her roster.
Curry laughs while sharing how she always makes sure the Tigers’ uniforms are clean and smell freshly laundered or how she will bring sandwiches to practice to keep “her boys” well-fed.
It seems that Curry's coaching tactics have done the team plenty of good, as the Jefferson Somerset Tigers advanced to the second tier in the Class 1A Boys Basketball Regional Semi-Finals for the state title in 2020, and while the Tigers might have lost a chance to claim the 2020 title, they fell only a few points behind their opponent.
As societal norms shift, Curry says she is interested in seeing more female coaches on the court in upcoming years and express positive outlooks to involving female voices in the sports world.
“I think most female basketball players are more fundamentally sound. We’re not going to slam dunk, so we have to grow other skills and I think that's something that women can bring to coaching basketball,” adds Coach Curry. “To transition that to other male sports, I think female voices can only help overall. If we blend that culture of female skill and fundamentals with male physicality, there can only be a more dynamic team.”
While there is much growth needed for more women to take leadership in the coaching world, Curry believes the athletes and students are already prepared and willing to encounter that change.
“I think the players are ready. Parents and society might not be ready, but the kids are ready,” she says. “Kids that want to play, they just want a coach. They want a leader to lead and teach and coach them. Our kids are ready, if the rest of the world is down, then that’ll be good.”