By CHARLES RICHARDS
A new head girls basketball coach was introduced today at Paris High School – Ted Mackey, now the girls basketball coach at Anna High School.
Anna and Paris were in the same district “a couple of alignments ago,” and Mackey allowed himself to wonder “what if,” he said at a press conference.
Ted Mackey
“I always wondered what it would be like to have that type of talent, and to get ‘em right, and to see what happens after that,” he said.
Mackey takes over from Tarshanda Ferguson, who was reassigned last month, following a 12-17 record that ran her record at Paris High School to 117-135 for eight years.
Athletic director Barry Bowman introduced Mackey at a 7:30 a.m. press conference at the Paris ISD administration building.
“He’s the type of person we need at Paris ISD. … He’s got the kind of personality that people just flock to. I think that’s something our girls need in athletics,” Bowman said.
“We received 25 applications for the job and interviewed six,” Bowman said.
Mackey, 38, has been coaching in public school only five years – all of it at Anna – four years as an assistant and this past season as a head coach. He coached a women’s basketball team while simultaneously playing for a men’s team while in the Air Force.
He has also coached youth basketball.
He was a standout basketball and football player in high school in Ohio. A broken thumb derailed his hopes of playing college basketball, and he went into the military instead.
Mackey hopes to bring a fast-paced style of basketball to the Lady Wildcats, he said.
“I like to pressure the basketball big time, force turnovers,” he said.
“And I like to get up shots. I believe in getting up as many shots as you can – under control. Because honestly, the more shots you get up, the more likely you are to make shots. It’s simple math,” Mackey said.
“If you can shoot the three, you’re going to shoot the three, with me. IF you can shoot the three. You won’t take it if you can’t make it. But at the end of the day, you have to dictate your style of play to the kind of personnel you have.”
Mackey described himself as a “relationship person.”
“I believe in building relationships with people, with the young ladies, and first and foremost with the coaching staff,” he said.
Mackey was assistant boys’ coach at Anna from 2007-2010, during a run in which Anna won 78 games over the three seasons. He was assistant girls’ coach in 2010-2011, and head girls’ basketball coach and girls cross country and track coach this past year.
The Anna Coyotes girls team went 18-12 year before last, making the playoffs for the first time in a couple of decades, then 5-23 this season after losing virtually the entire team to graduation, he said.
Mackey said he’s looking forward to meeting the players who will be returning for the Lady Wildcats next season.
“They’ve always been quick. They’ve always been able to get up shots. They have had success here. My job is to build upon what’s already been established there – to get us back to where we were and build upon that,” he said.
“There’s no reason we can’t be successful next year and for years to come.”
Mackey and his wife, Heather, have four children – Andre, 20, who attends Texas Tech; Elijah, 13, a seventh-grader; Shyla, 11, a fifth-grader; and Josiah, 9, a third-grader and “the splitting image of his daddy.”
All are athletic.
“We’re excited about getting here,” he said. The family expects to get into Paris in June.
His wife is attendance clerk at Anna High School.
Mackey will teaching in Paris ISD’s business department.
“I love technology,” he said. A year ago, Anna High School began a PowerPoint class with “tremendous success,” Mackey said. In a recent exam, 26 of 28 students passed the PowerPoint exam, he said.
Bowman related a story about how he came to notice Mackey.
Several weeks ago, the Paris Junior High track team was participating in a meet at Princeton, Bowman said, and Anna also had athletes in the meet.
“I saw you coaching about four or five junior high kids. I was walking by on my way to someplace else on the facility, and I stopped, and watched you. And I thought, if we ever have an opportunity to get a guy like him, we need to do it,” the athletic director said.
It was only a few days later that Bowman posted the job for the girls head basketball coaching job, and one of the first resumes that came in was that of Mackey.
“I saw his picture and I said, ‘That’s the guy I was watching!’ So it got my attention, the way he was with the kids at a junior high track meet. That was very impressive to me, and I had never seen him before in my life,” Bowman said.
Superintendent Paul Trull interjected, “That’s just proof – someone’s always watching.”
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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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