When Jackie Martin-Glass took over the Warren Central girls basketball program after legendary coach Donny Fuller left for Gulfport, she was trying to fill the shoes of an institution.

Click here to view all-county team

A 377-202 record over 23 years and nine division titles at the school made Fuller a tough act to follow. Add to the mix that the team lost its top two scorers, Sha’Kayla Caples and point guard Karnina Bunch, and you have all of the ingredients for lowered expectations.

Martin-Glass would have none of it. The first-year coach transitioned from being Fuller’s top assistant into the head coaching role and molded the Lady Vikes into a team with scoring balance and defensive intensity, earning her The Vicksburg Post’s girls basketball coach of the year. She did all of this after being hired just two weeks before the season started. It helped that she had coached most of her players on the ninth grade team.

The Lady Vikes (16-9) pushed Greenville-Weston to the limit in the championship game of the Division 4-6A Tournament before falling to Horn Lake in the first round of the state playoffs.

The key was molding this year’s team, who were primarily role players behind Caples and Bunch, into a group capable of stepping up and putting the points on the board.

“Going in, I was excited about the talent we had, but I just knew that we had to gel them together,” Martin-Glass said.

The key was getting forward Ricille Davis to transition from blue collar workhorse on defense and on the boards to team captain and leading scorer. A meeting in the coach’s office proved huge.

“I challenged her to be our leader and our star player after we lost to Greenville-Weston,” Martin-Glass said. “I gave her the go-ahead to be our leader because with her discipline and work ethic, she was going to be our only captain. She stepped up.”

Davis bumped her averages from 7.8 points per game and 6.6 rebounds per game to 15.6 ppg and eight rebounds per and the Lady Vikes took off from there.

Despite the strong start, Martin-Glass is ready to build on her initial success and build the same kind of lasting success at Warren Central that her predecessor did.

“I’m looking to build this program from the bottom up,” Martin-Glass said. “We’re getting kids in here on several dates this summer to work on their basic skills: shooting, passing and dribbling. I felt we were weak in our skills this year and that we’re really going to stress fundamentals.”

Contact Steve Wilson at swilson@vicksburgpost.com