By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

LYMAN — Sandra Rushing is coming home.
Rushing, a D’Iberville High graduate, was named the head girls basketball coach at Harrison Central High School Friday, according to school officials.
Rushing comes home to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after an extremely successful collegiate coaching career that included stops at Central Arkansas University, Delta State and the University of Texas El-Paso among others. She stepped away from the head job at UCA at the end of the 2023 season after 11 years at the helm of the Sugar Bears.

Rushing finished with 184 career victories at UCA, the second-most in school history, and she has won 587 games over her stellar 34-year head coaching career. Rushing took the Sugar Bears to the NCAA National Tournament twice in 2016 and 2017 and finished second in the 2018 WBI postseason tournament, falling at home to Yale.
Rushing’s teams won the Southland Conference regular season in 2016 and 2017, putting together a combined 54-9 record during that span. They set the school record with 28 victories in 2015-16.
“I want to thank Coach Rushing for her many years of dedication to our program,” said UCA President Brad Teague, who also worked with Rushing at Delta State, upon her resignation at UCA. “She took our program to new heights with her NCAA tournament appearances. She has been a head coach for 34 years and is someone I truly admire and respect. “

Rushing played collegiately at Alabama from 1982-1986, where she was a four-time Academic All-SEC selection and holds the Crimson Tide’s career free throw percentage record. She left Tuscaloosa after becoming the all-time assist leader for the Lady Tide. She also led the Southeastern Conference in free throw shooting percentage her senior season.
She capped off a standout career at D’Iberville High by averaging almost 20 points per game as a senior while battling a foot injury and still earning that scholarship to Alabama.
Before landing in Conway, Ark., Rushing coached previously at Delta State, Henderson State, UTEP and Millsaps. At Delta State from 2002-12, Rushing was the league’s Coach of the Year a record-setting six times and was named Coach of the Decade in 2010 while taking the Lady Statesmen to eight NCAA Tournaments, reaching the Final Four in consecutive years in 2008 and 2009.

Rushing spent 11 seasons in the Western Athletic Conference as the head coach at UTEP from 1990-2001. During her time in El Paso, Rushing accumulated what was then a program-record 123 wins, broke the school record for wins in a season, and was inducted into the El Paso Commission for Women Hall of Fame in 1999.
She began her head coaching career at age 24 with one season at Millsaps College in 1989-90 after two years as a graduate assistant at Delta State the two years prior.