Tracy Fendley is Warner Robins through and through

My first interview attempt was thwarted by an afternoon tennis match. Warner Robins High School alum and current girls head basketball coach Tracy Fendley will always be surrounded by sports and that was the case on Thursday afternoon when I attempted to call her for the first of what I hoped would be two interviews for this story. There may not be a busier woman in Warner Robins than Fendley, and I found out that that’s the way she wants it to be. Fendley is right where she wants to be.

“Everybody always told me I was going to be a coach,” said Fendley after we finally got an opportunity to talk. “In high school, I never even considered coaching. I always just wanted to play.” Today, she is the coach of one of the state’s best basketball teams and the keep of the torch that is Warner Robins Demonettes basketball.

“I was the point guard and you know that was the coach on the floor,” says Fendley. See, she’s exactly where she’s supposed to be. “For me, it’s in my blood.”

Fendley’s connection with Warner Robins High School athletics — she played both basketball and softball while in high school — comes from deep within her bloodlines. Her mother, Jackie Jenkins, was a Warner Robins High school athlete (basketball), as was her brother (baseball and football), sister (basketball) and niece, Courtney Walker, a senior forward on this year’s 27-2 AAAAA-region 1 regular season and tournament championship team and softball star. The red and black of Warner Robins High runs deep in this family.

“It was really special to come back home to help impact lives like the coaches impacted my life when I was here,” says Fendley. “My mom played basketball here, so did my aunt and uncle. We grew up coming to Warner Robins High School sporting events. I can remember coming to McConnell-Talbert to watch football games as a little girl.”

Fendley’s high school basketball career at Warner Robins started the same year former Demonettes head coach Tom Mobley began his tenure at the school. Their relationship as coach and player, teacher and pupil started when Mobley coached her at Rumble Junior High School and continues till this day. The examples she learned in practice and on the court while playing for Mobley carried over into her future career choice.

“He’s still a mentor. I can still remember playing in the Elite 8 my senior year and how hard he coached us that season,” says Fendley.

The Demonettes lost to Troup County High School by a point at neutral site Jones County High School in 1994. Mobley remembers those times like they were yesterday. He also remembers coaching Fendley, the point guard.

“Tracy was one of the easiest players I had ever coached,” he said by phone on Monday afternoon. He coached Demonettes basketball for 24 years and is the foremost source on this basketball program and its history.

“You told her to do something once and she did it,” says Mobley.

Fendley averaged 18 points and eight rebounds a game during her senior season and Mobley thinks it could have been more.

“She was always a coach on the floor. I was always getting on her to shoot more, but she was always trying to get her teammates involved,” says Mobley.

Fendley moved on to play and study at Georgia College. There she would again be partnered with a future coaching mentor and lifelong friend, women’s head basketball coach John Carrick.

“Coach Carrick always put books before basketball,” says Fendley.

She majored in exercise science and earned a BA. When asked if she then thought about becoming a basketball coach, Fendley answered, “No, actually I thought about going into cardiac rehab.”

Fendley wanted to impact lives in a way other than basketball.

“I enjoyed working with the older and younger patients, but coach Carrick recommended that I go try coaching,” says Fendley. “He got me my first coaching job.” That job as a grad assistant at St. Leo University in Florida was the tipping point for Fendley. “As I got more experience, I got to learn to enjoy coaching more and realized this is where my calling was,” says Fendley, who is in her 11th year as a coach at Warner Robins High School — she assisted Mobley until his retirement in 2015 — and second as the head girls basketball coach.

The gig at St. Leo was sweet, with the beach nearby and the accessibility of college coaching.

“We would have individual workouts with players and in between, then we’d go and play golf,” she laughed. The thought of one day having a family crossed her mind and the instability of college coaching — no matter how many rounds of golf she was able to get in under the Florida sun — drove her to a change of pace and space. Once again, Carrick came through for his old player and Fendley was back in Georgia and off to coach and teach at Putnam County High School in Eatonton. While at St. Leo, she was taking master’s classes and she would ultimately complete that degree in health promotion at Georgia College during her early years at Putnam County. Then it was time to come home.

“Having a family is the most important thing to me,” says Fendley and today her husband Mike, a firefighter, and daughter Bella, 7, are the focus of her energies. The former point guard is still the coach on the floor, just this time the “floor” extends till after the games and practices at home.

Going into their 13th year of marriage in June, Fendley and Mike have to perform a delicate balancing act while engineering very stressful careers; one deals with fighting fires and the other deals with the up and down emotions of dealing with high school girls. Both have to be experts in their fields in order to succeed.

“It’s extremely difficult because when you leave the gym, you still have another job at home,” says Fendley. “The people that I work with at Warner Robins High School, the administration, coworkers, are good with working with me.” She also gets plenty of help from her family. “My mother is a trooper. Without her and my family helping us with Bella, I would be lost,” says Fendley with a chuckle that could easily be recognized as a sigh of relief. “My mom is very competitive. She loved sports and still comes to all of my games and is so very supportive.” I have a feeling this family will be in the stands cheering on a red and black clad Bella in a couple of years. Until then, Fendley has a number of players coming back from this year’s team and they are also her priority.

“Coach Fendley is a coach, mentor and a mother to all of us,” says junior forward Shynia Jackson. “She’s one of my heroes because she always saves me when I fall. She means business when we hit the hardwood, but off the court, she jokes with us.”

Walker, Fendley’s niece by way of her sister, spent the last two basketball seasons of her high school career with her aunt as her head coach, a relationship that Fendley admitted could be difficult at times.

“Having my aunt as my coach has been an adventure for sure,” admits Walker. “She’s not the aunt that just let me do whatever, but if I ever wanted to become a coach, I would want to be just like her because the way she coaches is like she’s another teammate on the court.”

Senior leader Le’terria Mathis finished the 2016-17 season on all of the lists for all-region and all-middle Georgia, a lot of which she credits to her relationship with Fendley.

“As a player, I always trusted her,” says Mathis, “and this season she pushed us to do things we didn’t know we could do. It was amazing.”

Jackson, who’s also an all-region selection, is returning for her senior season and says, “I’m blessed to have her as a coach.”

The former high school and college ball player is now a mother, wife and coach — not bad for somebody that didn’t want to be a coach in the first place.

“I’m having fun doing what I’m doing right now,” says Fendley. Looks like she’s exactly where she needs to be.

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