Sports Profile: Courted Home

Atlanta native and new women's basketball coach Sharon Baldwin-Tenor comes to GSU from East Carolina, where she led the team to their first-ever Conference USA Tournament title.

For those wondering where Sharon Baldwin-Tener got her toughness, look no further than the house on James Place in Smyrna, Ga., where she grew up. 

That's where, as a young girl, the head women's basketball coach dueled her older brother, Brian, in games of one-on-one in the driveway and took on him and his friends in neighborhood contests of baseball and sandlot football.

"I give him a lot of credit," Baldwin-Tener says of her brother. "We didn't exactly get along growing up. He made me tough."

That toughness defined her during her playing days. In high school she was the state AAAA Player of the year at Wills High School in Smyrna, and as a college player, she overcame a torn ACL to star at both Kennesaw State and the University of Georgia.

At Georgia, where she transferred after two seasons at Kennesaw State, she was a gritty guard and team captain her senior year, leading the 1990 Bulldogs to a 25-5 record and a No. 7 overall ranking.

After that impressive campaign, Georgia's Hall of Fame head coach Andy Landers asked Baldwin-Tener, who had just earned her degree in business education, to stick around and become a graduate assistant.

During her seven seasons as an assistant for Landers, she coached two Final Four teams and earned the Naismith National Assistant Coach of the Year award in 1997. She also earned her master's degree in education. 

"Sharon is a proven winner," Landers said. "She won as a player, she was a great asset on our staff and was influential in some of our finest moments."

She left Athens to start a program at Life University in Marietta, Ga. In just her second season there, the team went 31-3 and advanced to the Elite Eight of the NAIA tournament.

She left Life for Mercer University in Macon, Ga., where she coached for one season and was named Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year in 2002.

From there, she took the head coaching position at East Carolina, where she turned the languishing program into a perennial contender. During her eight-year tenure there, the squad's overall Division I rank improved nearly 150 spots and attendance quadrupled. In 2007, she led the Pirates to their first-ever Conference USA Tournament Title. 

More importantly, she says, she graduated every player who finished her eligibility at East Carolina.

"The main thing, to me, is that I want my teams to be good people as well as good players," she said. "I want them to graduate, I want them to do the right thing and in four years, I want them to be a better person as well as a better basketball player."

Now, Baldwin-Tener, hired in April, is back in Atlanta. She runs an aggressive, up-tempo style of play, and she's ready to take the Panthers to new heights. 

"It's a great feeling to be back home," said Baldwin-Tener, who lives with her husband Matt - a former Georgia football player - and their two children just a few miles from her old house on James Place.

"I'm just really excited to have the opportunity to build a program and make a strong program in my hometown. The challenge is there, but we can do it."