[jammin' jamey]

My daughter brought this site to my attention the other night. I would like to say thanks to the Hopkins’ family for all that you did for the program the last 2 years. My daughter was heartbroken when she found out that Coach Hopkins was not returning. I would like to say that my daughter learned a lot about basketball under them. Coach Hopkins put a lot of time and hard work into this program the last 2 years. She made sure that any girl that wanted to attend summer camps was able to, and provided the best gear for the girls. If I’m not mistaken, when she took over the program only 6 high school girls come out for the team. This had a lot to do with the way Mark Martin run the program, he’s the reason the program went down. I can honestly say that my daughter was never cursed or blamed a loss during the tenure of Coach Hopkins, unlike the days of Mark Martin. Coach Hopkins took a program on the decline and had it going in the right direction, last year she had 10 high school girls out playing. She was not blessed with an abundance of talent, but you see the girls improve over the last two years. Someone said that Mark Martin had a real passion for the program, I don’t you could ever question the passion that Coach Hopkins had. I for one would like to say thanks and good luck in the future.

Glad to hear your opinion on the subject and thanks for sharing - welcome to the site.

If I may, I would like to point out that Martin had success while he was coaching the team in terms of wins, regional tournament wins, helping a couple of girls extend their careers to the collegiate level (Becky Thomas) and build for the future. I know Mark professionally and being around him in the field of broadcasting, whenever his station came to broadcast a game involving Allen Central, his former players would come up to talk about the their current situation and just to say "hi". Mark was appreciated and loved by many of his former players.

I hope that Mark's return would not deter your daughter from coming out to help the team, because just like when Jennifer took over, Mark has been left with only 5 high school girls and some junior high players that have never played one single minute of high school basketball. What does this say for Jennifer and how she had the program "heading in the right direction?" Also, I hate to point this out to you, but if Mark had been allowed to maintain his teaching job 2 seasons ago, he would've been dealing with the same rebuilding project that Jennifer chose to take. He didn't take any players with him and one starter (Yumekia Hunter) quit the team because of Jennifer. Mark knew he had a huge rebuilding job ahead of him and he wasn't going to back away from that.

As for Jennifer, I said this before: as a rookie coach, she was in a little over her head in terms of the rebuilding job. Mark had two years on her in the situation and was beginning to build a foundation. That process was restarted from the beginning by Jennifer and the Hopkins' and let's be honest, it never got off the ground. I would also say that if Mark had stayed, they may have been a few wins better, but more importantly, the players would have been used to his system and his ways, thus their fundamentals would have been better than they are now. That's no slap to Jennifer or her family, they are great people, just this wasn't the ideal situation for Jennifer to walk into and I wish them all good luck in the future.

I'm sure Mark has made mistakes and I'm even more sure that he would like to have your daughter and as many girls as possible taking interest in bringing Allen Central Lady Rebs basketball back to where it was in the 1990's.