Gamecock great glad to be home coaching basketball with mission to rebuild RNE program
About an hour from the start of his first game as Richland Northeast High boys’ basketball coach Tuesday night, Jo Jo English sat quietly in his corner office of the gymnasium.
English was reading a through short devotional in his Coach’s Playbook. Behind him were his clothes he would be wearing, which included tan pants, blue socks and blue tie.
But something was missing: one of his two go-to white shirts he often wore while assistant coach at Catawba College and head coach at Sumter High, where he led the Gamecocks to a state title in 2015. Soon, English’s mother Julia and father Stephen arrived with the white, neatly-pressed shirt they picked up from the dry cleaners. Julia English also gave her son packs of gum to give to the team before the game. His parents also have helped with meals for the players.
Having his parents and sisters able to drop by close to game time is a perk of being back in his hometown. They no longer have to make the long road trips to Salisbury, N.C., where English was an assistant coach at Catawba for almost three years.
“I’m glad to have him back here,” Julia English said.
Jo Jo is glad to be back coaching in Columbia, a city in which he was a standout basketball player at Lower Richland High and won two state championships. He went to South Carolina (1988–1992) where he was part of the Gamecocks’ NCAA tournament team as a freshman and went on to score 1,439 points in his career.
“It is good to be close to my family and be close to my daughter, not having to go back and forth,” English said.
English played three seasons in the NBA for the Chicago Bulls from 1992-94 and was part of two NBA championship teams. He bounced around for nearly a decade after that in the Continental Basketball Association and overseas in Australia, France and Israel, among other places.
With his playing days behind him, English knew he wanted to get into coaching. He was interim girls coach at Scott’s Branch High when the coach was killed in a car accident in the 2011-12 season.
English spent two seasons at Sumter before giving college coaching a try. The long trips and recruiting, plus some health issues, cut his time at Catawba short. English battles with Graves’ disease, which is caused by an overactive thyroid gland and affects his vision.
English said his health problems are under control and “coaching is in a way the best medicine.” So that made it easy when RNE athletic director Gary Fulmer approached him about the job when it came open.
Fulmer, who was an assistant at LR when English played, said Jo Jo was the first person he called when there was an opening at RNE. Fulmer wanted English help to get the program back on track.
Fulmer led the Cavs to a state title appearance in 2002, but the program has fallen on hard times and hasn’t had a winning season since 2012. Last season, the Cavs won their season opener before losing their final 18 games.
English said he had other offers after leaving Catawba, but RNE intrigued him because of the tradition and trying to rebuild a program.
“My passion is coaching those kids who get on and off that bus, making them believe in each other,” English said. “The challenge seeing they haven’t had much success over the last few years? Trying to put a basketball team together that believes in each other and goes out there and competes. That was the most interesting challenge.
“My calling is to help those that need me to be a part of their life and the experiences I can share to help them be successful and progress through life.”
Fulmer likes what he’s seen.
“He has done a great job bringing old-school basketball ideas and discipline to the program. He is focused on the student-athlete and doing things the right way,” Fulmer said. “If you don’t do things the right way, his voice can get loud. They play hard for him.”
English’s hire brings some excitement to the program. For Tuesday’s opener against Dreher, there was a full student section, made up of ROTC students wearing “6th Man T-Shirts.” The RNE basketball players went through a military-type training by the ROTC to help get ready for the season.
English was encouraged by the students’ turnout in the 64-54 win over Dreher and hopes they put out a product worthy of getting kids out there. Like all first games, English saw plenty of things to work on, such as cutting down on the 17 turnovers that helped the Blue Devils get back in the game.
Getting players to play hard and “with perfect effort” is something English has stressed and brought up in his pre-game speech. He also wants his teams to thrive on playing defense and have one of the top defensive teams in the state, something he learned playing for the likes of legendary coaches Jim Childers and George Glymph.
English saw flashes of it at times against the Blue Devils, but he knows there is plenty of room for improvement. Still, it was a good first step and he was glad to be back on the bench.
“I got a couple more gray hairs but that is part of coaching,” English joked after the game. “My responsibility is to make them better inside and out. That is the most important thing about this group of kids and the culture here is teaching them how to compete and not be afraid to fail. Sometimes when things get hard, they put heads down. But the teams we play aren’t going to feel sorry for us, so we’ve got to find away to fight through and overcome the difficulties of basketball game.
“We have a good group and are going to be competitive in every game. How many we win? I’m not sure. The goal is to have perfect effort every day and every time we play.”
This story was originally published November 28, 2018 at 12:14 PM.