The Tribune

GABI Laurent, a former standout with the CC Sweeting Cobras men’s basketball team coached by Mario Bowleg, has been elevated to the head coaching job of the Ranger College Lady Rangers basketball team.

Laurent, who graduated from CC Sweeting in 2011 and went on to play for the Rangers men’s basketball that same year, becomes just the second active Bahamian head coach of a women’s basketball programme.

Starting from the junior college level where he worked previously as an assistant coach of his alma mater under coach Larry Brown, Laurent joins Grand Bahamian Yolett McPhee-McCuin, who isin her fourth season as the head coach of the Ole Miss Lady Rebels team in NCAA Division One.

While a member of the Cobras’ team, Laurent said he clearly remembers how Bowleg took them to the Coaches Clinic where they were used to demonstrate the plays to the visiting coaches from the United States and Canada.

“I started learning from there,” Laurent said. “The players started calling me ‘coach’ because I could remember all of the plays the coach taught us.”

Brown, who was then the head coach of the Bahamas Basketball Federation men’s national team, recruited Laurent to play for him at Ranger College after he saw me play in an AAU basketball tournament with coach Kevin ‘KJ’ Johnson in Orlando, Florida.

“When I came to Ranger, our team was the first team to win the conference title in 43 years,” Laurent recalled. “The second year, I didn’t play, but I was Larry’s assistant and we won the title again.”

After leaving for a short period of time, Brown returned to Ranger College this year and he reunited with Laurent as his assistant. When he didn’t coach, Laurent took over.

This year, Ranger College won the Conference Tournament again and they went on to win the Region Five title and they went on to play in the Final Four in the National Junior College Championships, the only school to have done it three out of five times.

“After the women’s coach (Bill Foy) resigned, he invited me into his office and was getting my input about the team, only to find out that he had recommended me for the job,” Laurent said

“I was amazed by that because he was the coach of the team for 50 years and he came to me for advice. I didn’t know that he had me as the first choice to take over his position.”

Having assisted with Ranger College women’s basketball and soccer teams for the past two years, Laurent said he went into his new position with some level of experience working with women.

“I feel great. I have a lot of confidence. I’m well prepared,” he said. “I was blessed to have worked with some great coaches like Mario Bowleg, Kevin Johnson, Larry Brown and Bill Foy and a few division one coaches at Baylor, Texas Tech and Pierre View College. I think I’m ready.”

Laurent, 27, said he’s eager to get to work. He’s already started recruiting, selecting his first nine players and is trying to fill the final three spots. He said he intends to come back home this summer to start a recruiting process for next year.

At the same time, he is also expected to assist McPhee-McCuin with the women’s basketball team. He noted that he and McPhee-McCuin have already talked and will be meeting in the US very soon to start their preparation for the team.

Additionally, Laurent said he will also be looking at helping to recruit some male players for Ranger College as well when he returns home.

“I don’t have the words to explain it,” said Laurent about becoming another Bahamian head coach in any sport, particularly basketball. “I am just so proud.”

No one seemed to admire Laurent’s accomplishment more than Bowleg, who is now the president of the BBF.

“When I got the call last night (Wednesday), that was one of the happiest and proudest moment in my lifetime to see a former player, who I helped to get off to the same school where he obtained his education, to play and move up the ranks as an assistant coach in the men’s programme and now to be the head coach of the women’s programme,” Bowleg stressed.

“To be able to get the recommendation and then the nomination and now to become the head coach of the women’s team tells me that which he learnt over the years under the various coaches, has certainly elevated him to this position today.”

Bowleg said it bodes well for the Bahamas to have another Bahamian advance to the coaching ranks and it will only benefit the country, the BBF and basketball in general, as they continue to move to the next level.

Laurent, the son of single parent Eda Lubin, is married to Breanna Laurent and they are the proud parents of a son, Jamir King Laurent.