On Jan. 14, 1976, Sylvia Hatchell paced the sidelines for the first time as a head coach, some butterflies in the stomach and a nervous tingle in her heart. Five hundred and five wins after leading tiny Francis Marion past Voorhees 88-62 in her collegiate coaching debut, Hatchell is guiding a school a little bigger, and with a bit more national prestige-North Carolina.
Twenty-two years of coaching, however, has not changed Hatchell's approach to the game one bit.
"I don't even remember that first game," Hatchell said. "I guess more than anything else, [I remember] the excitement. You get all tensed and excited for the game. It's probably as much today as it was in that first game. I think as long as I feel that every time I have a game, I would like to keep going as long as I can feel that way."
Based on her results in recent years, however, Hatchell does not appear to have lost any of her enthusiasm or coaching talent. After winning the national championship in 1994, Hatchell has led her team to the Sweet 16 in '95 and '97, and is now overseeing a resurgent Tar Heel squad who is riding a six-game winning streak and a No. 5 national ranking.
Hatchell could not have picked a better way to begin the six-game win streak, as the Tar Heels rallied from a 10-point deficit to claim a 67-64 win over N.C. State and snap a two-game skid. The victory was the 500th of Hatchell's coaching career, placing her in an elite class of seven coaches who have reached that milestone in women's college basketball. What does it all mean to Hatchell?
"It means that I've been doing this for too long," Hatchell said, only half jokingly. "I've been very blessed by being at two great universities and have two very good administration and coaching staff. I've been very blessed and fortunate to be in situations where I can enjoy what I'm doing."
When someone has had as much success as Hatchell in her illustrious career, it's pretty difficult not to be enjoying the ride. In her 11 seasons with the Francis Marion Lady Patriots, Hatchell notched a sterling record of 273 wins against only 80 losses, including a NAIA championship in 1986. Her 1982 Lady Patriots' squad also captured the AIAW title in the small college division. Perhaps even more remarkable is that under Hatchell's guidance, Francis Marion was never ranked lower than 18th nationally.
When Hatchell bolted Marion to take the head coaching post at Carolina after Marion's championship season in 1986, however, she seemed to have left her success back in Marion. Following a successful debut season in 1987, Hatchell and her Tar Heels fell on hard times in the next four years. In that stretch, Carolina finished under .500 every season and failed to win more than four Atlantic Coast Conference games in any of those seasons.
The dark cloud hanging over Hatchell's team quickly dissipated in 1992, as the team finished 22-9 and advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament. Two years later, North Carolina captured its first NCAA women's basketball championship in extraordinary fashion. Three-time All-American Charlotte Smith's three-pointer at the buzzer propelled the Tar Heels to a 60-59 win over Louisiana Tech in perhaps the greatest game in the history of the women's NCAA Tournament.
"[Hatchell's] done a great job," Duke coach Gail Goestenkors said. "She's taken her team from the bottom of the conference to the very top of the nation. [She's done it] with recruiting-great recruiting. She brings in some of the best players in the nation year after year and gets them to play hard."
With women's basketball recruiting becoming more competitive and fierce by the moment, Hatchell finds success through an old-fashioned philosophy: honesty.
"You have to build a relationship with [the recruits], you have to be honest with them," Hatchell said. "I think you have to build a personal level with them because they have to realize where they fit in.
"There's a lot of things going on out there that make it very difficult for coaches to keep their integrity. [Women's recruiting] is going in that direction. A lot of people will do anything to get players and anything to win. So I think it has to be very controlled and very policed, because it's getting worse every year."
Faced with the dramatic changes in the landscape of women's basketball in her 23 years of coaching, Hatchell sees only one constant: the players. And those player-coach relationships are exactly what keeps Hatchell coming back to the sidelines and loving every minute of it.
"When they're here, they know I'm not their best friend, I'm their coach," Hatchell said. "They've got to do what I tell them to do. It's a player-coach relationship, and yet they also know if they need me, there's nothing I will not do for them, as long as it's not an NCAA violation. I think they have the security of knowing that me and my staff, we're here for them, and they can count on us no matter what."
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