Stan Gatlin sees promise at Southwind

article from CommercialAppeal.com


The coaching carousel has been busily turning over the last few weeks, with one of the more high-profile moves coming at Southwind.

Stan Gatlin is the new girls basketball coach, replacing Surina Dixon.

"It's a very good atmosphere here," he said. "The facilities are awesome and those kids seem to be really hungry for improvement."

Gatlin spent the past six seasons at Millington, where he rebuilt a traditionally strong program that had fallen on hard times.

The Lady Trojans went 4-29 in the year before Gatlin's arrival. But under his leadership, Millington went 159-46, winning four District 14-AAA titles, three district tourney crowns and three regional tournaments.

Millington also made four straight substate appearances and finished runner-up in the 2008 AAA tournament with a 37-2 record.

"It was my decision to leave (Millington)," he said. "It's something that I had been thinking about. I felt like I had pretty much done everything I needed to do there and it was time to move on.

"They have a good situation there with (6-3 junior-to-be) Tiara Caldwell and some nice young girls coming up."

At Southwind, Gatlin won't be tackling such a big reclamation project. The Jaguars have won 19 games in each of the past two seasons while competing in a very competitive District 15-AAA.

"It's a good situation to come in to," he said. "I'm going to push them as much as I can."