'Dream come true': 24-year-old takes over Athens-area high school basketball program
East Jackson girls basketball has a new coach this season.
Faith Grooms, 24, inherited the Eagles' program after former coach Matt Allen left in October for personal reasons.
Grooms is a fourth-grade teacher at East Jackson Elementary and also the East Jackson high school softball coach. It's everything she's ever dreamed of, if not more, and she's one of the lucky ones getting to be at that level straight out of college.
Grooms is a homegrown talent, born and raised in the Athens-area and a 2017 graduate of East Jackson High.
"It's cool because there's a lot of teachers that were here, that are here now, when I went to school, so I'm teaching with the people that taught me," Grooms said.
Grooms was not aware she was going to be handed the girls basketball program. She expected to be an assistant to Allen, as she had been prior, but he had been advocating to administration for her to be his replacement.
"Faith was the only name I brought up," Allen said. "She was a large part of the reason I was comfortable making the jump at the point in time that I made it. The timing of the move was not great, I understand that for all parties involved, but Faith being there, being invested in not only our basketball program, but our school and our community, made that choice a little bit easier for me."
When she was called in to have the pitch presented to her, to make her head coach, she took it and ran with it. What's one more varsity program on her plate?
Grooms coached the Eagles' softball team this fall to the Super Regionals, where they fell to Eagles Landing Christian and in the loser's bracket to North Cobb. The season ended for them on Oct. 18 — a Wednesday — and preparation for basketball season started the next Monday. She got two days off, if you could call it a break she joked.
"After softball practice would end, I would spend time in the gym or going home and making sure that I was preparing for basketball season," she said. "Starting to write practice plans and starting to get some girls to come try out, reaching out to them to make sure they knew there was a coaching change.
It takes a lot of extra work, hours put in behind the scenes, but Grooms is passionate. She grew up playing both basketball and softball, playing for East Jackson during her student tenure, before following the latter all the way through her time at Brenau. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in 2021, earned her master's degree in 2022 from Augusta University and is going into her third year as an educator.
Her time as both a student and athlete help shape her perspective as a coach.
"A lot of the girls that are on the team this year are kids that I either played with their older siblings or I know their families, or again I've coached them for a while, or I was a high schooler when they were coming to kiddy camp, stuff like that," she said.
The history has made it easy to transition, because relationships are already built, making flexibility a strong suit as players buy in to what Grooms presents for the season with her own touch. Her biggest point of emphasis has been rebuilding, as plenty of other Athens-area coaches are also doing.
"The one thing I've continuously told my girls for motivation is that you don't grow where you're comfortable," Grooms said. "Obviously I'm having to reflect that in my own life and coaching because, again, I was thrown into this at the last minute, so at first I wasn't comfortable. If I'm comfortable, then I'm complacent and I'm not doing enough. Same goes for them."
East Jackson girls' basketball kicked off their season on Nov. 11 with a 27-31 loss at Johnson. Their home opener is Tuesday against West Hall at 6 p.m.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Faith Grooms takes over East Jackson girls basketball program
