Darlington local looks to provide stability in Lady Falcons
Darlington High School Girls Varsity Basketball Team 2016-17.
Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
Almost every successful sports program you see, whether its high school, college or professional, boys or girls, men or women, they all have one glaring characteristic; stability.
Stability is the starting point of building a solid foundation and unlike a building where it is from the ground up, the foundation of team starts from the top and trickles down throughout the team.
Over the last few years, the Darlington Lady Falcons basketball team has not had been able to have that stability because it has not had a consistent foundation up top.
In the last five years the Lady Falcons have had three head coaches, Jeff Bly, Jabari Deas and Francis Fields. Now they have a fourth in six years as Brad Knox prepares to take over the girls’ basketball program for the first time.
Formerly an assistant to Deas to go along with being the head coach of boys JV basketball team last year, familiarity is not a problem for Knox. In fact, Knox is a local product of Darlington, who played for the Falcons while learning from his father, LaVerne Knox.
“I think having my dad as a coach and watching him at an early age it kind of motivated me, it kind of pushed me,” Knox said. “I watched how he did things at Lee Central High School and me playing against him, I was at Darlington and he was at Lee Central, but Darlington was home for me. This opportunity came and I thought about, prayed about it and I thought this was the right fit for me.”
Coaching back at home can be tricky, especially when it is your first gig. There is usually a lot of pressure to be successful because fans seem to raise the level of expectations because you are the local, home grown individual.
For some it works out and for others it does no;, but for Knox, he thinks it is the perfect situation.
“I think it is a blessing to be able to coach home,” Knox said. “At the end of the day you still have to walk a line, you can fired at any time. I just try to take my approach of working on my game, getting my girls ready and just building relationships with them every day. I know the fans, I know the community so anytime you get out there and show your face and build relationships with the community I think it will show up in your program.”
For this situation to turn out the way Knox envisions it he has to solidify a foundation and he has a plan for how to do it. He wants to build relationships with every single player on his roster.
“It’s all about building relationships with them, getting them to play hard and to hold themselves accountable on the floor,” Knox said.
Building relationships is not always the easiest matter, however. Knox, who also helps coach the Darlington Falcons football team, has had to balance time with both teams as the sports begin to overlap, especially with the delay in football due to Hurricane Matthew.
And while that may have limited some of the time Knox would have had with his team, it did not stop him from building those relationships with his players.
“I think when you are building relationships it is not only at practice,” Knox said. “Sometimes you may have to call the girls to check up on them and see how they are doing, how there day is going. I always tell them all the time that ‘you never know how the other person is feeling’.”
Knox inherits a team that has exceptional length with some experienced guards like Deja Turner returning that gives the Falcons a chance to have both a dynamic offense and a disruptive defense.
“We have three six footers so we want to be able to go inside out,” Knox said. “We want to play an up-tempo style defense and we also want to be adjustable with running multiple defenses.”
Those types of players with that type of experience has Knox’s expectations high, hoping his Lady Falcons can do something that has not happened in Darlington for quite some time when it comes to the girls basketball program.
“My expectations for this season are just like any other team, it’s to win the region, it’s to play at home,” Knox said. “I think the last time we played a home playoff game was about eight or nine years ago, maybe seven years ago.”
To be good, to be successful not only takes hard work, it takes confidence. It takes a group of players truly believing in what they are doing, loving what they are doing and always willing to learn. It takes some swagger.
“The swagger, the swagger of the team, they smile, they look like the enjoy what they are doing, getting after it, me getting on them every day, pushing them, being positive, not bringing them down, but trying to build them up or when I’m coaching them, bringing them down also having the encouragement to build them back up,” Knox said.
The only thing left now is to take what is learned and translate it to wins on the court.