OXFORD, Ms. — Regardless of the sport, coaches like to coach. Those who are successful love to coach. That’s why it’s no surprise former West Virginia University Rifle Coach Marsha Beasley finds herself facing a new challenge and starting a different chapter of her career as the new head coach of the Ole Miss Rifle Team.
“I really enjoy coaching and I tried to put it aside and was raising kids,” Beasley said. “But then when I started to get back into it with my son I realized how much I really missed it.”
Beasley coached the Mountaineers from 1990 – 2006 and led the storied program to eight NCAA National Championships. Since her departure from WVU she has spent time raising her three children, one of whom is a student at WVU and her twin boys are about to head off to college in another year. She’s been a volunteer coach with the Mason-Dixon Junior Rifle Club and the West Virginia Junior Marksmanship program. One of her sons has flourished in his development as a shooter under the watchful eye of his mom. The experience apparently rekindled the flame for Beasley.
“When I saw this job was open I thought, well, I’ll throw my hat in the ring,” she said. “and oh my gosh, the really wanted me!”
The humble Beasley is probably the only one who couldn’t see the glimmer of gold in the pages of her resume with eight national championships. Furthermore, she coached eight individuals to NCAA national titles and 27 student-athletes earned 67 NRA All-America honors during her tenure. Four team members competed in the Olympic Games after leaving WVU. Twenty-five of Beasley’s shooters in Morgantown were named All-Academic 55 times by the Collegiate Rifle Coaches Association. Her mere interest in the job had to be a load off the mind of Ole Miss Athletic Director Ross Bjork.
“The Ole Miss family enthusiastically welcomes Marsha as our new head rifle coach,” Bjork said in a press release announcing Beasley’s hiring. “This is an unprecedented hire for our program – never before have we welcomed a head coach who has won eight national championships in their respective sport. Our vision for Ole Miss rifle is to win national championships and we determined that we must go out and recruit the best head coach in the country. We’re grateful Marsha sees it the same way and she is now an Ole Miss Rebel. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for our student-athletes and our program.”
However, even Beasley admits the job at Ole Miss will require more than just an impressive resume. The challenges will be steep for a program which has struggled to be competitive in recent years and part of the reason is half of the nation’s shooters can’t step to the line for the Rebels.
“Ole Miss added rifle 20 yeas ago when the SEC asked all of their institutions to add a women’s sport. So it was added as a women’s’ sport but the NCAA Rifle is a mixed competition,” she said. “We’ll be competing against mixed teams.”
Therefore the best male shooters in the world will be looking elsewhere when making their college team selection and the Rebels’ recruiting will be limited.
“During my interview we talked about that at length,” she said. “I said you’re taking the recruiting pie and basically cutting it in half and telling these folks, ‘We don’t want you.’ Then you have five other women’s’ teams who are going after the best women shooters as are all the other teams. It’s a very different recruiting dynamic.”
But the challenges in recruiting are somewhat offset by the quality of facilities. Beasley found a much more modern and world class operation in Oxford than the top floor of the Shell Building in Morgantown.
“The range is very nice. It’s actually in a National Guard facility. The guard center was built 12 years ago and they had to put in a shooting range. Ole Miss approached them about doing a joint project,” Beasley said. “It’s a 12 point facility, all electronic targets, with great ventilation. The spectator area has everything behind the line floor to ceiling a plexiglass viewing area with bleachers and monitors to show shots on targets. It’s much more spacious. The team room has open, football style lockers and it just has much more space than most ranges have.”
The facility has hosted the Great American Rifle Conference Championships and is an inviting place for opposing coaches. That’s a luxury Beasley wasn’t accustomed to.
“All the teams seem to like coming here, at WVU it was tough to get teams to come,” she said. “Coaches would say,’Why would I want to go there and get beaten.’ Whereas at Ole Miss, our team hasn’t been as competitive, there are nicer facilities, and a better chance for mild weather.”
The Dixie weather won’t change and the range won’t either, but given a few years and Beasley’s determination opposing coaches may not be as eager to travel to Oxford where an easy win won’t be a given.
“We want to be more competitive and just like everybody else, we want to have the best team.” Beasley said.
Don’t be surprised when it happens in a few years.