Many who have experienced leaving home for the first time remember the anxiety they felt inside – a mixed knot of uncertainty, dread, excitement, and hope – when an 18-year familiarity is packed up in a suitcase and ceremonially traded for the unfamiliar. Mia Hollingsworth knows that feeling quite well.
Just a few months ago, Mia, the daughter and only child of Vess and Faith Hollingsworth, left the community of Jasper, Alabama, to become a student and basketball player at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). The former Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) 5A State Champion and First Team All-State selection swapped the stardom and acclaim of high school sports for the unchartered waters of the collegiate arena—with a new team and a new coach in a new city. Now concluding her first semester at UAH, Mia has endured the butterfly phase of freshman life and settled into her weekly routines. She’s assimilated well with the other members of the Lady Chargers’ team, has approached her 17-credit-hour course load responsibly, and has kept her head on straight in the process. Not that she has much time for anything else these days. After all, being a student-athlete at UAH has its demands.
“They definitely take academics to another level (at UAH),” Mia says. “Our coach always tells us to get the most you can out of basketball, but also in classes because a degree from here of has like a little pop to it.”
Though it often doesn’t garner as much publicity as other educational and athletic titans throughout the state, UAH has quietly emerged as a statewide leader in academics. A public, four-year university with an enrollment of 8,743 undergraduates and postgraduates, UAH boasts students from 59 foreign countries and 49 states with 3.92 being the average GPA of entering freshmen. Mirroring the city of Huntsville’s fascination with the sciences is UAH’s reputation for engineering prowess, and Mia hopes that in four short years she will have secured a degree in mechanical engineering, her master’s in five. Overall, with its proximity to Jasper and offerings in both athletics and academics, UAH has proven to be the perfect fit for Mia—“it’s just been amazing,” she says.
Though Mia has traded the luxuries of home and family for dorm life, her roommate pairing for this semester has been an unexpected blessing. Though unbeknownst to Mia, she and her roommate, Ivey Maddox of Good Hope, Ala., have common athletic roots. Mia’s dad, Vess, played at Walker College in Jasper from 1991-93, while Ivey’s dad, Jody Maddox, played there from 1995-97. Both played under junior college coaching icon Glen R. Clem.
The two freshmen and roommates have collected significant playing time for the Lady Chargers this season and have been contributing factors for the team’s success and an 8-2 record. Mia describes the dynamic of their friendship: “We’ve gotten so close. It’s, like, hilarious. And I think we get on some of our other teammates’ nerves because they’re a lot older than we are. We’re just goofy. In the weight room…we’ll have to separate because we can’t be serious around each other. And so it always cracks up the older girls because we’re always just acting crazy.”
Though the girls seem to be having a ball, it’s not all fun and games under first-year head coach Allen Sharpe, who demands a great deal out of his players and has standards that are off the charts. Practice is intense and losing is simply unacceptable in the Sharpian ecosystem. Mia relates a story about her coach after an 114-65 blowout win against UT Southern back on November 30—a game that gave Sharpe his 500th overall win as a head coach:
“We beat UT Southern by, like, 50, and we didn’t even play great. And we walked in the locker room, and we had set up all the balloons and everything for his 500th win, and…he was just still torn up that we didn’t play that good,” Mia says.
Though this mindset may seem uncanny, it’s why Sharpe won over 70 percent of his games across two decades as a head coach and notched thirteen 20-win seasons during that span. Sharpe, who played at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., is a disciple of coaching legend Don Meyer and has won everywhere he’s been. Which means that no one should anticipate anything different during his tenure at UAH and Mia will have to work all the harder to find success on the basketball court over the next four years.
To be sure, life in Division II basketball may lack the glamour of Division I – perpetual bus rides to away games, limited budgets, and smaller arenas are commonplace – but make no mistake, the athletes and coaches take a no less serious approach and play a high brand of basketball. Charger athletic teams compete in the Gulf Coast Conference against teams like Delta State, Mississippi College, West Florida, Auburn University-Montgomery, Trevecca, West Alabama, and Montevallo, among others. This season, the Lady Chargers had the opportunity to travel to Lakeland, Fla., on November 8 and 9, for a two-game crossover with the Sunshine State Conference. In two hard-fought contests, UAH lost to Florida Southern and eked out a win against Rollins College. And, since it was a 14-hour drive from Huntsville to Lakeland, the road trip was busted up into two nights, giving the ladies a greater chance to bond and get to know one another between pregame meals and hotel card games (Mia says that often, bus rides are much quieter on the way there than on the way back, especially if the Lady Chargers are coming home with a win).
Forasmuch success as she had on the high school level, Mia says she has been surprised she’s been able to log significant minutes as a freshman, especially due to the increased physicality of the game and the size differential, especially at the guard position. Mia’s ace in the hole, however, is that she has always been an absolute assassin from behind the arc. Across 10 games at UAH, she has already reached double figures in three of those contests and has hit at least one three pointer in every game but one. Versus Tuskegee in only her third collegiate game, Mia scored 15 points on 5-of-6 shooting from three-point territory and added 11 against Florida Southern. Indeed, scoring has never been a problem for Mia, but defense is an aspect of her game that will have to improve as she moves through her college career: “I just have to keep working in that aspect,” she admits.
Another challenge for Mia involves her relationship with her dad. Vess, who serves as a teacher and coach at Jasper High School, coached Mia in basketball and golf for the last six seasons, but now that Mia is off at college his role has been relegated to that mentor/advisor. Not that he’s not dialed in; in fact, Vess often watches practice from his cell phone and still doses out coaching nuggets to his favorite player on the regular—“He’ll send me a text before practice and be like, don’t forget to stay down and help (on defense),” Mia says—but because of distance, he’s simply not as present and involved as he once was. It’s a change to which Mia has had to adapt.
In all, Mia has tackled the trials and challenges of this new experience with both grace and grit. It’s not an easy thing to be a student-athlete at a four-year university, to thrive at a high academic and athletic level with the pulls and temptations of college life. Yet, Mia seems to be getting along just fine. It’s a tribute to her determination, but also to the values that Vess and Faith instilled in her from a very young age. Values of family, faith, perseverance, and hard work – the kind of tried-and-true principles that will stand the test of time as Mia navigates the unfamiliar and builds a life she can one day be proud of. TG
A special thanks to the sponsor for this article, Clement Homes. To connect with Clement Homes, please visit builddaddy.com
Photos by Al Blanton
