GREEN — Home is where Alicia Manning’s heart is.
Manning is leaving her position as Green High School girls basketball coach to return to her native Georgia. She has no immediate job lined up. After spending 12 years in Northeast Ohio, there was a driving force in her decision to go home.
“My mom, my dad and both my older brothers live there,” Manning said. “I also have two nieces, two nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles. My entire family is there.
“It just has been really weighing on me. For the last two years it’s like, dang, it’s getting harder not spending holidays there and missing birthdays.
“My parents are getting older, too. Time is just becoming more and more precious to me as they get older, and family is becoming more and more important.”
Manning played basketball for Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee. She came to Northeast Ohio in 2013 and spent two years as an assistant coach at John Carroll, four years as the head coach at Northwest and the last six seasons as Green’s head coach. She remained a teacher at Northwest while at Green.
Basketball has been a big part of Manning’s life. Although her move is being made for family reasons, she is not closing the door on the game she loves.
“I have some contacts where I feel very confident that finding a job is not going to be difficult,” Manning said. “I definitely want to continue coaching, whether that’s at the college level, high school level, in some realm of the basketball world.”
Manning built Green into one of the area’s most successful girls basketball programs. The Bulldogs reached the Division II regional finals before losing to Olmsted Falls this past season.
Manning called it an “absolute pleasure” to coach at Green. She said she is grateful for a staff that included assistants Harold Ickes, Rick Prinkey, Jake Shocklee, Sarah Good, Samer Zawahri and Brin Stralka.
“I’ve had a village help me build Green,” Manning said. “… The families are great. They raise amazing kids. They teach them how to be really good humans.
“I have been lucky and blessed that they helped develop athletic kids who want to learn, get better and have great attitudes. When you put those things together, you can win a lot of games.”
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This article originally appeared on The Repository: Ohio high school girls basketball | Green coach Alicia Manning resigns
Reporting by Mike Popovich, Canton Repository / The Repository
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
