South Georgia - In The Game High School Sports Magazine

You are here: Home Category Blog Coach's Corner Feb. 2009

Coach's Corner Feb. 2009

Wednesday, 09 June 2010 11:58
E-mail Print PDF
Coachs Corner

Shan Garner

Lowndes High School
Valdosta, Georgia
by Robert Preston, Jr.
photography by Jonathan Chick

Every high school coach, no matter what sport, wants to win a state championship. It’s the ultimate prize, one that all chase but few obtain.

Lowndes High women’s basketball coach Shan Garner is no different. His main objective at the beginning of each year is to guide his team all the way to the top of the 5A heap. Winning it all is difficult. He acknowledges that. It takes the right mix of players and coaching, a lot of hard work and more than a little luck. “It’s hard to get that title. But I want the chance,” he says.

He’s in as good a place as he could be, outside of the metro Atlanta area, to have that chance. Lowndes High has a rich basketball heritage that goes back over 30 years. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Lowndes Vikettes were a powerhouse. Under head coach Charles Cooper, Lowndes didn’t lose a game for four years. The Vikettes have contributed over 20 banners to the Lowndes High collection.  Being a part of a tradition like that can be difficult to grasp. The expectations are high and the pressure suffocating at times. But Coach Garner has thrived in that kind of environment.

Garner hails from tiny Echols County, one of the smallest communities in the state. He played basketball for Echols County High, and was good enough to continue his playing career at Brewton-Parker in Mount Vernon. He eventually returned to Valdosta where he finished his education at Valdosta State University.

Garner was a shooting guard who could fill up the basket from anywhere on the court. Unfortunately, he didn’t care much about the other aspects of the game. “There are three parts of the game. I did one well. I didn’t care about rebounding or defense. Being able to shoot will get you a little way but it won’t get you very far,” he says, laughing.

Garner knew that basketball would play a prominent role in his career. He loved the game and couldn’t see himself getting very far from it. Coaching was a natural fit. After finishing at VSU, he was an assistant and a junior varsity/ninth grade head coach for five years. Then an opportunity to return to Echols County presented itself. He applied for and received the men’s head coaching job at Echols County. In his second year at Echols, his team won 20 games and made the playoffs.

While he loved coaching basketball at his alma mater, he didn’t particularly care for the other coaching duties he had: cross country, eighth grade head baseball coach and varsity baseball assistant coach, junior varsity basketball and a basketball program for elementary school students. His family was just starting to grow and the grind of that kind of schedule was simply too much.  Then he found out Lowndes was looking for a women’s head basketball coach. He hadn’t really considered coaching a girls’ team but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to coach one sport at one of the premier schools in the state.
Shan Garner

Shan Garner

Shan Garner
    He sent in his resume, and he was selected. That was five years ago, and he’s enjoyed every minute of it. Of course, coaching is easy to enjoy when you’re winning. And Garner has certainly done that.

    For the last three seasons, the Vikettes have finished at the top of Region 1-AAAAA at the end of the regular season. In the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 campaigns, Lowndes won the region title and advanced to the Sweet 16. Both years, Region 2-AAAAA from Atlanta knocked the Vikettes out of the playoffs.

    And that’s what he wants to work on. Coach Garner wants that title, but he knows he’s got to go through the metro area to get it. Right now, the Atlanta teams have an advantage over the teams from other parts of the state. “Our athletes are as good as you’ll find anywhere. But the players in the metro area spend a lot more time on the court than we do. They just play more basketball. We’re closing that gap but we’ve still got to work on that,” he says.

    For the last two years, his teams have been the best in South Georgia. But he wants to be one of the best at the state level. To get there, Coach Garner is constantly raising the bar for his girls.

    His coaching philosophy is simple: Take each game possession by possession. “We play defense and our goal is to keep you in front of us. Our players are accountable to each other and they take pride in the way they play. We may not shoot the ball well, but we’ll play defense,” he says. “We want to take care of the regular season and then the region tournament. After that, we want to go as far as we can in the playoffs.”

    That’s a bit ironic, given his lack of concern for defense as a player. But Coach Garner’s game plan has worked out. His two consecutive region championships have added to the heritage he inherited when he arrived at Lowndes.  Those two titles have earned him a pair of Coach of the Year awards, and it doesn’t look like he’s about to slow down anytime soon. The 2008-2009 Vikettes were 12-2 overall and 3-0 in the region at the time of this writing.

    Lowndes’ two losses came early in the season: Camden County defeated the Vikettes early in the season, and the number-one ranked Parkview Panthers beat Lowndes in the Powerade tournament at Parkview (the Parkview women are undefeated at the time of this interview).

    Coach Garner wants his team to play in the Atlanta-area tournaments in order to face the best competition in the state. That’s the only way the girls will break through that barrier and enter into the state championship dialogue.

    He’s content at Lowndes but that doesn’t mean he isn’t looking to the future. Coach Garner dreams of coaching at the college level. “I would love to be able to pick players from across the country that fit into my system. In high school, we have to take the players we have and mold them into the system. But I enjoy Lowndes. Our facilities are hard to beat,” he says.

    Garner’s wife, Maria, is, as he puts it, “the backbone of our operation.” She keeps him grounded, while his two children — Gabby, 8, and Grant, 6 — keep him on the go when he isn’t coaching. They are very much into sports and they both “play everything,” says Garner.

    With his family and his school behind him, he is able to focus intently on narrowing that gap on the metro area and winning the elusive state title. While his teams don’t chase ghosts, they are very much aware of the winning tradition that is Lowndes basketball. They don’t dwell on that, but it motivates them to win; they don’t want to be “that team” that upsets the tradition.

    Those factors enable Coach Garner to refine his game plan. He’s making progress on his goal to raise the Vikettes to state prominence. Each year, they get closer and closer to having that breakthrough playoff performance. It will happen one day, probably sooner than later.

    Who knows? It might even happen this year . . .

    Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 August 2010 14:54 )  


    In The Game High School Sports Magazine

    South Georgia Edition