Marion’s Sturkey winning games while battling illness

By David Shelton

Staff Writer

Marion – You would never know by watching him on the sidelines, but Marion girl’s basketball coach Leon Sturkey was far from healthy while his team was making a run to a second consecutive class AA lower state title last March.

In fact, not long after his team beat Bishop England to advance to the state finals, Sturkey was in a hospital battling pneumonia. Soon after his team lost in the state championship game to Southside Christian, Sturkey was back in the hospital.

Sturkey has been diagnosed with kidney disease and takes daily dialysis treatment at his home while waiting for a donor kidney. Nonetheless, he presses on and plans to continue coaching for a long time.

“I have a great support system at home and at school and a lot of people are assisting me with dealing my sickness,” said Sturkey, who has been the head girl’s basketball coach at Marion for seven years.

Sturkey got a late start in coaching. After graduating from Clinton High in 1986, he attended Francis Marion University and received his master’s degree from The Citadel. He went into private business out of college, working with the public housing authority. He was urged 13 years ago to pursue coaching and became a guidance counselor. He’s glad he did.

“In the back of my mind, I suppose coaching was something I always wanted to do but I didn’t have the educational background to be a teacher,” said Sturkey. “I finally decided to go for it and became a counselor and Marion was good enough to allow me to coach. I was an assistant with the boy’s team and then the girl’s team for six years and I learned a lot.”

Sturkey has found his niche coaching girl’s basketball. He says working with females is easier because they are more receptive to coaching and team play.

“Girls do what you ask and they don’t try to freelance as much,” said Sturkey. “I don’t think the girls have the ego issues as much. They play within the system, sometimes to a fault. I love watching the guys play and I love basketball but as far as coaching, I feel like I’m set on coaching girls.”

Sturkey’s preference, in terms of the way his teams play, is an up-tempo, fast-paced game. Marion creates pressure from end to end and tries to score in transition. He has certainly had the athletes to work with recently, having won the state title two seasons ago and losing in the finals last year.

“We’ve been fortunate to have very talented players who are also hard workers and team players,” said Sturkey. “We want to run but we’ve had the athletes lately to play half-court basketball or we can run the floor. We’ve been blessed to have some very good players in recent years.”