GIRLS BASKETBALL COACH OF THE YEAR: Pelham’s Antonia Tookes continues to strive for perfection

ALBANY — It wasn’t uncommon to see the Pelham Lady Hornets basketball team leading a team by 20, 30 sometimes even 40 or more points this season.

What was uncommon was to see a content coach in Antonia Tookes.

A casual onlooker with no prior knowledge of the team or the score would have no idea they were as dominant as they were based on how hard Tookes continued to coach.

It was her attention to detail, her drive for perfection and her desire for excellence that led the Lady Hornets to their fourth straight region title and a 30-1 record this season. The season included 17 games victories and their first state championship since 1997.

Her efforts garnered her The Albany Herald Girls Coach of the Year honor for the second straight season.

With a talented team, Tookes said she can’t gauge her team’s progress by just the score alone.

“I’m just watching to see if my team is executing plays and playing defense,” she said. “I very seldom look up at the scoreboard. If I look up at the scoreboard it’s probably at the end of the quarter.

“My assistant coach will say ‘Coach, we’re up by 30, you can sit down,’ and I say no, because if I sit down, then they will think the game is over. I’m just so engaged in making sure that they play for 32 minutes because this year, I felt like we might get a shot at playing in the championship game and I wanted them to know that you’ve got to play for 32 minutes if you want to win a state championship.”

Finding a balance between being a perfectionist and being a realist was one of the challenges Tookes faced this season as a coach. She credits her team for giving maximum effort and in turn, teaching her patience as well.

“I found myself sometimes watching the film when I told a kid, ‘I don’t think you played as hard as you could play,’ ” she said. “And I go back and look at the film and seen that this kid was closing out on defense, running the floor hard and I had to go back to her the next day at practice and say you know what, I apologize to you because you were going hard. It just didn’t seem to me in the game that you were going hard enough.”

She noted that the team dynamic of trusting while pushing one another helped a tremendous amount in the state championship game.

“They were more confident going into the state championship game than I was,” she said. “They were teasing me the whole time, ‘Coach you’re so nervous. Coach we’re gonna be all right. Coach we got you. Coach you more nervous than we are,’ and I’m like we’re in the state championship game, how can you not feel butterflies? And they just said ‘Coach, we’re fine, you calm down.’ ”

They delivered on that promise defeating Telfair County 60-42 at the University of Georgia’s Stegeman Coliseum.

Senior Destiny Thomas, who has played with Tookes since middle school, said the head coach’s drive and passion helps her and her teammates on and off the court.

“She doesn’t just help you become a better player, she helps you become a better person,” Thomas said, “She tells us that it’s bigger than basketball. So she stays on us about our grades and keeping our attitudes right because that’ll take us farther than basketball because that’s going to stop one day.”

Tookes tries to instill in her players things she learned from her favorite coach and biggest professional influence, the late great Pat Summitt. While she didn’t have the opportunity to play or coach under Summitt, she recalled the time Tennessee was facing Georgia years ago and Sumitt took time out to meet with her.

“I had lower seats and after the game was over, I kept calling her ‘Pat, Coach Sumitt,’ and I guess she said who is this crazy person calling me? She came over to me, gave me her autograph and I told her how much I admired her growing up,” Tookes said. “And she said, ‘Well honey, don’t aspire to be like me, be better than me,’ and from that day on, I had always loved her, but I loved her that much more. She took the time out and she didn’t know me from anybody.”

Staying true to the Summitt’s teachings, don’t expect Tookes to sit down and relax any time soon. While the state championship goal was accomplished, she said she needs another one to keep it company.