Back in 1988, newly hired Wingate University men’s basketball coach and athletic director John Thurston saw something in a named freshman women’s basketball player, and future UNCW coach, Ann Hancock.

Already a veteran in the collegiate ranks, he’d coached the Farleigh Dickenson and JMU men’s teams, Thurston saw Hancock as strong player who told him almost immediately that she wanted to coach herself. He made her the head counselor at his basketball camp. He included her with his men’s basketball squad in the weight room. The often talked about hoops.

When Hancock graduated, Thurston called as many contacts as possible, looking for a restricted-earnings coaching position for her.

And Hancock got a great job, joining the North Carolina staff. The next year, when the Tar Heels won the national championship, she held a full time slot.

“She would ask questions all the time,” Thurston said of those earlier days. “I always admired her work ethic and how hard she worked in basketball and how hard she worked in her studies and practice to give her the benefit of everything I knew at the time. … I always told her that if I ever stayed in coaching, and I went to another job I would hire her as an assistant.”

At UNCW, the teacher and his protégé are together again.

Only it’s Hancock that’s the boss.

Thurston, who took this job just before the season, loves every minute of it.

“I enjoy it,” Thurston, CAA Coach of the Year in 1986-87, said. “The difference was that the last time I was an assistant, I was like an older brother to a lot of the players, because I was in my 30s and 40s. But now I’m more of a fatherly or grandfatherly age.”

Thurston brings a veteran’s know-how and experience that makes things run smoothly. And his friendship with Hancock helps bring her perspective.

“Which is sometimes not good, because he can remind me of how bad that I really was,” Hancock said. “Or when I say, ‘Well, I would have done that.’ And he will say, ‘No, no, no. Wait a minute. You wouldn’t have done that.’ He can bring me back to reality before I can pump up my abilities.”

That experience, perspective and ability brings more concrete results. Up at 5 a.m., he takes care of work before anyone gets in, he anticipates tasks – such as paperwork – that the staff will have to take care of and over 30 years of coaching does pay off on the court.

“He’s a very good coach,” senior guard Cherie Lea said. “He comes up with a lot of players, diagrams and when we need stuff to get a basket. … He always tells me what he sees when I get out of a game. What I need to do, what the team needs to do. And when I go in there after he talks to me, it works.”