By The Shreveport Times
BOSSIER CITY, La. — Bossier Parish Community College will add women’s basketball to it’s sports offerings for the 2013-14 season and has hired former AAU coach John Rennie as the school’s first coach, BPCC athletic director Karen Recchia said Wednesday.
John Rennie
The two-year school already offers men’s basketball, along with baseball and softball, and has been gauging the interest in a women’s program through intramural sports.
The Lady Cavaliers will compete in JUCO’s Region XIV conference against some powerhouse programs including Trinity Valley Community College, the defending national champion of women’s junior college basketball.
“It’s a tough league, but we want to play the best,” Rennie said.
Bossier Parish’s entry into women’s basketball next season will make Region XIV once again a 10-team league. During the summer, Lon Morris (at Jacksonville) dropped athletics, leaving only nine teams.
Also in Region XIV are Angelina, Blinn, Jacksonville, Panola, Paris, San Jacinto-North and Tyler. Each team plays each other twice during conference play, on a home-and-home basis, with the top eight teams advancing to a post-season tournament.
Rennie, who owns Upside Sports and teaches basketball privately for several groups or churches, will work part time in running the new program.
“Due to budget cuts, we could not offer the original position we had hoped for, but John will do a full-time job on a part-time basis,” Recchia said.
“I have known John for many, many years and am impressed with the caring attitude he has toward young people. He has a lot of respect in the basketball community.”
Rennie, who coached WNBA stars Alana Beard and Morenike Atunrase with the Shreveport Heat, has hit the ground running, even though the women’s basketball budget hasn’t yet been set. He plans to hold open tryouts and expects to offer 15 scholarships.
“I’m excited about this opportunity and I’ve been busy building a structure for this program,” Rennie said. “I want to have everything in place and be able to show people how we’ll operate this program when I start bringing people in.”
Toward that end, Rennie will hold the 2012 Fall Tip-Off Clinic on Sept. 29 from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the BPCC gym. The free event is for high school girls basketball coaches and players.
Charles Richards Charles Richards moved to Paris in 2004 after retiring from a 40-year career in journalism – the last 26 years as a news writer and sports writer with The Associated Press in Dallas and Washington, D.C. In mid-2004, The Paris News coaxed him out of retirement, and he began covering the police, court and regional beat for The Paris News. Then in early 2005, he was switched to coverage of a sharply divided Paris City Council. He was appointed by the City Council in 2006 to the 12-member City Charter Review Commission, which extensively rewrote the outmoded document. His writing awards include two first-place awards in statewide competition for feature writing. The most recent was his 2005 story on a Paris doctor’s startling use of leeches in a successful attempt to re-attach a man’s severed ear. Over his career, Richards’ interview subjects include Alabama Gov. George Wallace, President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush, David Koresh, Arnold Palmer, Muhammad Ali and numerous other political and sports figures. He is an alumnus of Texas Tech, where he was editor of the school newspaper. He lives in Paris with his wife, Barbara, who is retired after 30 years as a teacher and high school counselor.
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