Photo by Todd Van Emst
The news broke earlier today that Nell Fortner, who has been coaching the Auburn women’s basketball team for eight years and taken the Lady Tigers to two NCAA Tournament appearances, had decided to leave the program at the end of the season. Auburn has two games left, against Alabama and Ole Miss, followed by an SEC Tournament appearance, before she plans to ride off into the sunset. I’ll have more on this below, but Fortner isn’t planning on taking another job in coaching. After 28 years, she has decided to coach her last game. Rather than pull out the best quotes from Fortner’s press conference about her decison, I thought it better to simply post her answers on the blog, edited.
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Q & A: Nell Fortner
Opening statement…
Fortner: “First let me just say this: I absolutely love Auburn. It has been a great place for me for the past eight years, and I have enjoyed every minute here. The opportunity that (Director of Athletics) Jay (Jacobs) and (Senior Women’s Administrator)Meredith (Jenkins) have given me here has just been outstanding, their support and everything. I want you to know first and foremost that today is my decision, period. Period. . … So it’s a good day for me in the sense that I’ve had 28 years of recruiting, and I’ve had a great career. I’m not going to say great. I’ve had a wonderful time, and I’ve had some great experiences. I’m just ready to do something else. That’s the bottom line.”
On where she plans to be in the future…
“I love this community, and I plan on being here and being a big Auburn fan, and I love the Auburn family, and I’ll stay in the Auburn family that way.”
On telling the team…
“Players are going to get emotional. It was emotional in there, but you know, they’re resilient too. They’re kids. It hits them hard, and then they move on and think about what they’re going to have for dinner. It’s tough. It’s been tough for the staff, but we’re all going to be OK. Everybody’s going to be all right and move on.”
On when she knew it was time…
“When you’ve coached for 28 years, it’s not something that just happens to you overnight. It’s an accumulation over time. I don’t know if I could pinpoint a certain specific time. You just know when it’s time. … When it finally got to the point that I knew, I just went in and talked to Jay and Meredith and that’s just it.”
On her next step…
“I’m going to go to Florida and jump on my paddle board and swim around with the dolphins for a little bit, but there’s a lot of life to be lived. I’m young enough to go do something else and go enjoy some down time and see what else is out there. I have a lot of interests in a lot of stuff. I have a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm for life, and I want to go live it a little bit, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
On whether or not she wishes she could have kept the momentum from 2008 and 2009 going…
“I don’t have any regrets at all. Of course as a coach, you wish you could win more, and that’s probably the one thing you’re always wanting to do is just win more. I have no regrets. We have great kids here. They are character kids. They are great in the classroom. They have made us proud on and off the floor. Yeah, if we could’ve had more wins, sure, that would have been fantastic.”