VALDOSTA — Charles Cooper loved coaching basketball.

He spent most of his life coaching basketball, and he did it until the day he died.

Cooper, the former Lowndes High and Valdosta State women’s basketball coach, passed away Monday morning at Wesley Wood Health Center in Atlanta, following an extended illness. He was 73.

He will return to Valdosta to be laid to rest. His funeral will be at 2 p.m. Friday at Northside Baptist Church. Visitation will be today from 6-8 p.m. at Carson McLane Funeral Home.

“There are some people you hate to lose, and he’s one of them,” said former Valdosta State men’s basketball coach James Dominey. “Charles Cooper was a good coach and a good man.”

“He was a great coach, no doubt, and a great person, and he loved the game of basketball,” said Terry Wilkes, who played for Cooper’s first Lowndes boys team in 1968-69 and later succeeded him as Vikings head coach in 1977. “He influenced a lot of people, including me, and he’ll be missed.”

Cooper’s basketball coaching career spanned 49 years (1956-2005) and multiple generations. He coached at Morven High from 1956-58, Brooks County from 1958-66, Live Oak (Fla.) Suwannee from 1968-70, Lowndes from 1970-81, Valdosta State from 1981-94 and Piedmont from 1997-2005. He finished his career with a record of 1,009-428. He ranks seventh on the state all-time wins list, behind Ron Bradley, D.B. Carroll, Glenn Cassell, John B. Hawkins, Graham Woodall and Cliff Ranew (another former Lowndes coach).

Every place he coached, Cooper won a lot more games than he lost. He coached boys and he coached girls, and coached both for several years. He had an amazing career at the high school level, then moved up to the college ranks, and had a lot of success there as well.

Simply put, he could coach.

His greatest on-court legacy, though, will always be his great Lowndes girls teams of 1976-80. For four straight years, the Vikettes did not lose a single game, a winning streak that spanned 124 games. They were state champions all four years, and national champions all four years. They set marks approached by very few programs ever.

“I think it was a combination of the talent we had, and the coaching,” said former Lowndes standout Marcia Player Dodd. “We had some good players, but Coach Cooper knew how to bring the best out of us. When one player had a bad night, the others would step up. Coach Cooper and Jean (his wife and assistant coach) were just awesome.”

In his nine seasons coaching Lowndes’ girls, Cooper had an amazing record of 227-25.

“He had a lot of talent at Lowndes, no doubt, but sometimes it’s hard to coach a lot of talent, because everybody wants to be the star. He was able to take that talent, and make them a great team, and that’s why they won like they did,” Dominey said.

In 1981, Cooper was talked into taking over the women’s basketball program at Valdosta State. At VSU, Cooper won two conference and two South Region championships. His 1983-84 team compiled a school-best 30-3 record, on the way to VSU’s only Final Four appearance.

“He came from Lowndes, where he’d had a lot of success, and then did a good job at VSU,” Dominey said. “It’s not always easy to move from high school to college, but he did it well.

“We coached together for (14 seasons), so we spent many miles together on a bus on the roads of the Gulf South Conference, back before they split the conference in two. When you drive to Delta State and Tennessee-Martin, there’s a lot of time to talk, and we did. Because you spend so much time together, it’s important for the men’s basketball coach and the women’s basketball coach to get along, and we did. We had a lot of good times as coaches.”

In 1994, Cooper retired from coaching, and moved to Dahlonega in northern Georgia, where his wife Jean had become a school principal. He spent the beginning of his retirement fishing and playing golf, but could not get coaching out of his blood.



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In 1998, Piedmont president Dr. Ray Cleere, a former vice president for academic affairs at VSU, lured Cooper out of retirement to rebuild the school’s women’s basketball program.

“Charles and I have been friends since the early 1970s, and he came out of retirement to join us at Piedmont,” Cleere told The Northeast Georgian. “He produced an outstanding women’s basketball program, and it was never about him. It was always about his players. That was the most important thing to him.”

The Piedmont program was terrible when Cooper took the job, having lost 49 of its previous 52 games, but he quickly turned it around. His first team won 10 games, then his next three teams won 15, 17 and 19 games, respectively.

This past January, Cooper picked up his 1000th career coaching victory, a 79-66 victory over Maryville College. His 2004-05 team compiled a 23-4 record, Cooper’s best at Piedmont. As the season ended, he spoke optimistically of next season.

“After he won his 1,000th game, I called him up to congratulate him,” said Mason Barfield, athletic director at Clayton State, who played for Cooper at Lowndes from 1970-73. “He didn’t want to talk about the 1000th win, he wanted to talk about how good his team was. He talked about how he had every starter coming back next season. He had no plans to stop coaching.”

Those who knew him and played for him knew Cooper was a fierce competitor who always played to win.

“He hated to lose, as much as I did. Thankfully he didn’t lose much, though,” Dominey said.

He pushed his players hard. He made them repeat a drill in practice until they got it right. One of his mottos was, “If you don’t play hard, you don’t play.” He knew how to handle each player individually.

“He was tough, but it was because he wanted you to get better,” Dodd said. “He was responsible for making me the ballplayer that I was. He nurtured my talent and pushed me to excel. He taught me what it would take to win on the court and off.”

“He demanded as much out of the girls as a coach would demand out of a guys team,” Barfield said. “But he also had a quality to really let them know he cared about them as a person.”

“He was a disciplinarian, but he was fair,” Wilkes said. “He pushed us because he was trying to get the best out of us. He’s the one who really exuded confidence in me. I learned a lot from him.”

But winning wasn’t all Cooper was about. His players were very dear to him, and he aimed to help them succeed both on and off the court.

“I’ve been a part of hundreds of young people’s lives,” Cooper told The Valdosta Daily Times in January. “I’ve had players that have gone on to become doctors, lawyers, teachers and preachers. When they e-mail me or call me and tell me I’ve had effect on their lives, that’s the reward I get. I feel like I have taught them much more than just basketball.”

“He was a good father, a good coach, and more than anything, he was a great person,” Barfield said. “He cared about everyone he’s coached. Young people would go to war for him.”

Academics were also important to Cooper. In the fall 2004 semester, Cooper’s Piedmont players combined for 41 A’s, 14 B’s and just one C in the classroom.

Like most players who played for Cooper, Dodd treasures the time she spent playing for him and knowing him. Not only did she play for Cooper, she later got to watch him coach her daughter, Kristin McLeod, an All-Conference forward, at Piedmont from 2002-04.

“That was a dream come true for me to have Kristin play for him,” Dodd said. “It was awesome knowing she would have a chance to play for him. And she got so much better playing for Coach Cooper. He could take a player and get the most out of them.

“When Kristin was at Piedmont, I noticed he was still using many of the same drills he used with us at Lowndes. The basics still worked. And he still had that fire in him. He would still get on the referees, and he could still get in your face when he needed to.”

Coaching is a demanding profession that takes its toll on many of the people who choose to do it. It takes a special person to coach for several decades. Few coaches are still doing it in their late 50’s, much less at 73. But Charles Cooper loved the game of basketball, and he loved coaching that game.

“He was a man that was made to coach,” Dominey said. “He was a coach at heart. I’m glad he was able to coach for as long as he did. He could have retired long ago, but he chose to keep coaching. And he kept winning. He found a way to win wherever he coached, and that says a lot about him.

“Here’s a man who was able to do what he enjoyed the most for a long time, and do it the right way.”