Inspire Her: Anita Howard
Daniel Stackhouse
2/2/2022
Women’s basketball head coach Anita Howard has always been fighting her way to the top. In her third year at Georgia Southern, her drive and determination remain steadfast as she pushes her team toward success.
Since taking the helm, Howard has been leading the charge for a newer, more successful age of Georgia Southern women’s basketball. During their current season, the team stands at 11-7 and have been outplaying their opponents in almost every statistical category.
“I have been at every stop. I have hit every stop and then some… I’ve been through everything.”
From playing at the high school and collegiate level, to coaching both JV and varsity in high school, as well as all three divisions of NCAA women’s basketball as an assistant and head coach, Howard has done it all, and everywhere she has gone, she has thrived.
Through the seven seasons she has been a head coach, she has racked up a 145-55 record, attaining a .725 winning percentage. Her dominating career brought her to Georgia Southern in 2019. Since then, she has slowly but surely turned around a once struggling program.
On a typical day, she spends a lot of time watching films and in meetings. She also balances the business side of her job, community service, and checking in on players. On game days, she is zoned in on watching team film and film of the team’s opponent to the tune of gospel music.
“I love college athletics,” Howard said. “This is our future, and so you get to work with the future of our world. These are our future doctors, lawyers, basketball coaches, or whatever.”
Howard embraces the diversity of university campus and being able to interact with different kinds of people. She also appreciates the privilege to work with collegiate athletes who want to compete.
She credits her mother for being an inspiration and source of support for her sports career. Howard has also found inspiration in hall of fame player and coach Dawn Staley, currently coaching the South Carolina Gamecocks. As the top paid African-American female basketball coach, Howard sees Staley as what she wants to become.
“Typically as a player coming up, you’ve only been coached by men,” Howard said. “Now, women are making a push to be seen as equals, as far as pay grade, as far as just the respect that we are X’s and O’s coaches out here coaching women. You gotta be on point because you don’t get a lot of opportunities to have a seat at the table.”
As a head coach, Howard believes being on point and successful is important not just for her, but also for the next woman trying to come up as a basketball coach. She always knew women were capable, if not more so than men, as coaches in women’s basketball.
To Howard, having a female coaching a female player is a very important dynamic. She knows that women can understand and connect with a female athlete better than a man can since. There is value for her being a woman and being able to show her athletes that a woman can succeed as a player and beyond into the sports industry.
If there’s a woman aspiring to be in her position, she tells those young women to “be prepared and know your stuff.” She also wants those aspiring to get into the industry to be themselves.
“I’m always gonna be me.”
“I’m always gonna be me,” Howard said.” I’m not gonna try to be like somebody else, so I want young athletes and students here at Georgia Southern to see that you can have fun doing what you love to do at the highest of levels. I want to take Georgia Southern’s women’s basketball program to the top. Not just in the Sun Belt Conference but to the NCAA tournament. That’s what I want. To inspire everyone around me to know that it can be done here.”
