PEMBROKE -- Bryan County Lady Redskins basketball have built a successful program with Head Coach Mario Mincey at the forefront.

Mincey has led the Lady Redskins to four 20-win seasons in the last five years.

Growing up in Claxton, he attended Claxton High School and played football before heading down the road to Georgia Southern University to obtain his bachelor’s degree in Health and Community with a minor in Coaching.

“I moved around a little bit with my parents but I’m originally from Claxton and most of my time has been there,” Mincey said. “Then I went to Georgia Southern so those are my two stomping grounds.”

Mincey has been at Bryan County since 2007 and has worn a lot of different hats in the area.

“I first came to Bryan County 15 years ago,” he said. “I’ve coached football and track. I’ve been a middle school athletic director at Bryan Middle School and an assistant AD at Bryan County High School. The last 15 years I’ve dealt with everything from elementary school kids all the way up to high school kids and still coaching girls’ basketball and helping coach the tennis team right now at Bryan High. It’s been about helping the kids achieve good things.”

In 2019, Mincey secured his 200th career win and now he is creeping on getting 250 victories depending on how far the Lady Redskins go in the postseason.

“I’m at 247 wins right now at Bryan and looking to get 250,” Mincey said of his achievements. “Hopefully we can do well in this region tournament and get to state. We’ve been able to accomplish a lot of things within our girls’ basketball program. Put some kids into college, made it to the elite eight, we’ve won a couple region championships while I’ve been here. It was a lot of hard work getting here. I always tell young coaches not to let their first two years get them down because my first year here at Bryan, I was 1-22 and ever since then we just kind of took off. We’ve been able to do some good things.”

Outside of education and the basketball court, he has business ventures, serving as the Co-Owner of Trinity Bus Tours and Cruise Groove, Inc.

Mincey is a product of a coaching family.

His father, Norris coached recreation sports and eventually Claxton High School.

He’s now on Evans County Recreational Department’s board.

Mincey views his father and family as his black history figures that he modeled his values after.

“My inspiration is my dad,” he said. “He coached all these years, starting out at recreation and then he ended up coaching at Claxton High for a long time. Even though he’s retired, he still works around with the youth. He works on the board at Evans County Rec Department. He helps with the booster club in Claxton. I always call him ‘the original coach’ because he’s always been that guy that sees a younger kid and tries to get them to use sports to try to help get them around a positive environment. I watched him throughout the years taking me and my friends to go play ball. My brother coaches. My uncle Tony Welch is the coach of Jenkins football down in Savannah. My dad is a big inspiration to me. He still comes to my games. He gives advice but doesn’t overstep but is always that person that I can go to whenever I need to talk.”

His younger cousin is freshman guard and leading scorer for the Bryan County boys’ basketball team Elijah Mincey.

The elder Mincey serves as a mentor for his cousin and first-year high school player, convening with him to teach the operations of hoops paired with the daily routines of navigating through life.

“I talk to him about how basketball doesn’t start at six or seven o’clock when you get up in the morning,” Mincey advised to his cousin. “Because you got to do the right things in school and try to choose your friends wisely and understand that you got some talent and basketball can take him a long way, but you got to have your schoolwork and the discipline to understand that sometimes you have to choose going to the gym or going to work out over hanging with friends. Even though he’s just a freshman, I’m trying to help him understand that. I tell a lot of the kids to come get some shots up on Saturday mornings if the gym’s open and find somewhere to play in the offseason. Just make the right choices. I always bring up the examples of sometimes when these college or NFL players get into a situation – you’re just at the wrong place at the wrong time. If they were working out or doing something to work on their game, they might not have got in those situations. But I’m always going to be school first because you’re one injury away from not being able to play the game that you love. I always try to tell Elijah that he’s got to do his schoolwork and have some discipline and don’t get in the wrong things throughout the day and even on the court. It’s going to be times somebody’s going to say something to you, or something might not go the right way. You just got to control your emotions and handle it.” 

Prior to arriving at Bryan County, Mincey coached at Statesboro and Jenkins County in the early 2000’s where he mastered his style of coaching players.

“I always go back to my coaching days in Statesboro,” Mincey said. “It prepared me for now. I learned there that you can’t coach every kid the same just like the classroom. I treat coaching just like the classroom. You got to differentiate. Some kids you can coach real hard, some kids you got to take a different approach, and some kids you need a combination. Being at Jenkins County taught me a lot of that too. Just kids from different backgrounds and also helping them mesh for one common goal. And that’s what I try to teach here at Bryan with these kids.”

And once he made his adjustments and moved on to Pembroke, the Bryan County basketball girls team began excelling on the hardwood.

“No matter what’s going on, we’re going out to play for the brand because we got great tradition in girls’ basketball,” Mincey said. “I only had nine total wins in my first two years so over the last 13 years it’s been a wonderful thing to see. It’s kind of unique. I get to see these kids in sixth grade and next thing you know they’re in ninth grade coming to me, next thing you know they’re graduating and going on to play college ball, next thing you know they’re coming back to help out with our program and with our summer camps. We’ve taken the current kids to see some of our former players play in college. I had a player from 2011, Olivia Melvin who ended up going down to Coastal Georgia and had a good career and ended up being one of their assistant coaches.”

Melvin was an all-state point guard for the Lady Redskins, dropping over 1,300 points before graduating in 2011 and going off to College of Coastal Georgia to become the all-time leading scorer and a two-time All-American for the Mariners.

Seven years after her playing career ended, she’s  the assistant coach for the NAIA program. 

Picking up wins takes a backseat to creating a family-like camaraderie throughout the program along with sending athletes off with as many tools as possible to utilize as life skills once they graduate.

“It’s a family atmosphere. It’s bigger than basketball,” Mincey said of his program. “It’s always been bigger than sports for me anyway because I always just feel like my role is to be more of a mentor and help kids understand that we use sports as a way to handle adversity. In life, everything is not going to be perfect. I think that’s worked out wonderful for our kids. Just seeing them go on and be successful in life. That’s what we preach.”

Being a black coach and educator in Pembroke, Mincey can be viewed as emblematic for all students and athletes – especially the minority ones.

“A lot of the kids look at me as a father figure,” he said of his students and players. “They may have their father at home but I’m also their other father figure and male role model for boys and girls. I understand some of the things that they go through and see what some others might can’t see. I also feel like I’m an inspiration to some of those kids to go out say ‘I can do this because I had a coach that did the same thing.’ I try to lay out a roadmap that show them that things can be done. It’s important for me that I’m a living inspiration and marvel to them. They don’t have to read about it in a book because they see me every day. That’s important for them to see. They might not have a black teacher until third or fourth grade or might only have one until you get to middle school. So, when they come across me it’s an inspiration for them and that’s what I try to be every day.”

The Lady Redskins are currently 20-4, (11-3 Region 3A Public) with the Region 3A Public tournament beginning for them on Feb. 17.