"So You Want to be a Coach"

By Megan Webb

Getting in to coaching basketball looks different for everyone. Individual goals, personal connections and day-to-day life experiences will impact where you end up and what your role as a coach looks like.

For a lot of aspiring and active women’s basketball coaches, that’s where having a network of people and support system becomes important. For two current Texas State women’s basketball coaches and one former player turned middle school coach, that support system helped them find new homes coaching in Texas.

The way they found that support system: The WBCA’s “So You Want to be a Coach” program.

The WBCA (Women’s Basketball Coaches Association) is an organization of female basketball coaches that strive to, “build excellent people, not just excellent players.” Part of this, is through their “SO” program.

The “SO” program is an annual event that takes places at the Final Four and helps female collegiate basketball players who are interested in pursuing a career in coaching women's basketball. The three-day program provides aspiring coaches with professional development and career advancement through education, skills enhancement, networking and exposure opportunities. Additionally, the program is intended to help female athletes get experience and recognition for the availability of being high-level coaches.

Texas State women’s basketball alumni Ja’Kayla Bowie, Assistant Coach Paige Love and Graduate Assistant Demi Burdick all separately went through the WBCA’s “SO” program, only to all find their next step in Texas.

For all three of them, the program was a gamechanger in their individual careers.

Coach Demi

Burdick is in her first season as a graduate assistant at Texas State after a playing career at UT Martin, East Tennessee State and Delaware. As she went through her playing career, she realized she wanted to take that step into coaching when she was done playing. From there, it was encouragement from her coaches at Delaware to do the SO program.

“Once I got to Delaware is when I started really paying attention to what coaches do,” Burdick said. “That’s when I realized I wanted to go the graduate assistant route.”

Coach Demi being honored at her senior night at Delaware.

Burdick’s coaches at Delaware helped her get into the SO program and that’s where she learned some of the keys about being a good graduate assistant and coach. 

“I recommend the SO program to literally everyone who wants to coach,” said Burdick. “I learned so much and met so many people through it and really just learned what it takes to be a coach.”

As her playing career wrapped up, Burdick crossed paths with TXST Director of Player Personnel Mike Durrill. Durrill knew that the Bobcats needed a graduate assistant and helped get Burdick an interview. From there, Burdick was offered a job and began her coaching career at Texas State, largely in part because of the experience and knowledge she gained at the SO program.

Coach Paige

For Love, her experience with the SO program was back in 2016 and was the start of her coaching career. 

After finishing her playing career at UNC-Asheville, she was looking to get into coaching. By recommendation of her coaches at Asheville, Love applied for and was accepted to the program. 

From there, it was a bit of luck and a connection between Texas State women’s basketball head coach Zenarae Antoine and Love’s coach, now head coach at UNC-Asheville, Honey Brown, that helped Love land a graduate assistant spot at Texas State.

Coach Paige playing for UNC-Asheville.

“When I think about my coaching career, if it wasn’t for the SO program and being around my mentors, Texas State wouldn’t have been in the cards for me,” Love said. “Coach Z took a chance on a kid from North Carolina who didn’t know anything about Texas, didn’t know anything about college basketball coaching, and she took a chance, and I will always be grateful. Without the SO program my resume probably wasn’t where it needed to be and without it, I wouldn’t have had all the opportunities I’ve had since.”

Love is now in her second stint as an assistant coach at Texas State after briefly leaving to go back to her alma-mater. Now that she has returned, Love says, “[Texas State] is a great place to grow.”

After initially completing her SO program and beginning to look for jobs, Love wasn’t sure whether she wanted to go into teaching or coaching. After meeting with Antoine, she knew this was where she wanted to be.

“Coach Z really sold me on her vision. She’s one of my best mentors and she’s lived up to every expectation that she sold me as a young 22 year old.”

Now that Love is in her eighth season as a college basketball coach, she “couldn’t imagine her life any other way,” and that is largely because of the experience she gained at her SO program back in 2016.

Coach Paige coaching for Texas State.

Coach JB 

Ja’Kayla Bowie is a name familiar to most Texas State women’s basketball fans. She was a starter on the Bobcats 2022-23 Sun Belt Conference Regular Season Championship winning team and the former guard averaged 29 minutes a night, playing the second most minutes of any Bobcat in the 2022-23 season. As a five-year player of this program, she left her mark on the program.

After her playing career was over, though, she was ready for her next step: coaching. She had wanted to be a coach since she was young since members of her family had been, but now that she was done playing she had to figure out what that looked like.

Similarly to Burdick and Love, this started with the SO coaching program. Bowie went to the program in the spring of 2023, the same as Burdick. There she learned the importance of being an athletes-first coach, but also being a person outside of being a head coach.

Coach JB celebrates a win in her final season playing for Texas State.

“Once you get into coaching, you think about it all the time,” Bowie said. “I’ve been learning to just calm down a little bit and take time for myself so I can have energy for those girls.”

Bowie feels like the SO program prepared her for all the things she faces in the coach, though. Whether that’s being level-headed, being prepared with game film, or even just how to communicate with her players, the SO program touched on it all.

“Every time something happens it’s like, dang, we talked about this in the SO program,” Bowie said.

Bowie is now both a digital art teacher and coach at Hubbard Middle School, a role she didn’t necessarily expect but is enjoying. Eventually, Bowie hopes to return as a coach at her former high school, Robert E. Lee High School. She hopes to take what she learned from the SO program there with her.

Bowie, Love and Burdick all echo the same thoughts, though: without the SO program, they aren’t sure what their careers would’ve looked like. This program put on by the WBCA teaches former women’s college basketball players the information they need to get into coaching and how to make an impact on the lives of the athletes they coach.

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