Portions of the following were adapted from postandcourier.com
For Wanda Briley, it’s not about the awards. Perhaps that’s why she removed the nameplates from nearly all of her sports trophies and donated them to a high school that couldn’t afford to purchase awards for its athletes.
It was the high value Briley placed on the essence of teamwork that led her into coaching after graduation from USC. She enjoyed head basketball coaching jobs at High Point, Wake Forest and Winthrop, amassing a career record of 150-26. A highlight was when her 1978 High Point squad won the AIAW Division II national championship in Briley’s first season as a head coach. She was 25.
She knew in high school that she wanted to be a basketball coach, a dream that turned into reality when she accepted the assistant coaching position at Appalachian State University. After two seasons, she moved onto High Point, and after much success there, she was hired as the head coach at Wake Forest, where she was given the opportunity to build its women’s basketball program.
Briley also had another goal in high school. She wanted to someday work in athletic administration. When she took the basketball coaching job at Winthrop, she also served as the assistant athletic director, the department’s academic advisor and the primary women’s administrator.
After stints in other industries, Briley came full circle. She went back to coaching at the high school level for a while and is now the academic dean at Cardinal Newman in Columbia. “Now I coach kids in the classroom, just as I did on the court,” she says. “And they all call me Coach Briley.”
Athletics have been a huge part of Briley’s life, and she hopes other young athletes can learn the important life lessons from sports that she did.
“Sports taught me discipline, organization and how to work hard,” she says. “Athletes are a different breed. They know how to set goals and how to attain those goals. And most of them know that it’s all about the team.”
She is also an NCAA Advisor who advises and mentors student athletes who have the skill and desire to play their sport in college. NCAA process, recruiting, interview techniques
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