With the love of basketball always being a part of her life, LBCC women’s basketball head coach Tay Adams has brought great experience and a “never give up” attitude in her first year coaching the program.
“Our mentality stayed the same from the beginning to the end. We walked in the beginning of the summer saying ‘We’re a state championship team’ whether or not we had all the pieces yet or knew what that was going to look like. We knew that we had a chance and that we deserve to have a chance,” Adams said.
As someone who grew up loving basketball, Tay Adams played the sport from the age of seven up to her final year of high school in 2010 when she graduated from Morningside High School.
She then transferred to Loyola Marymount University to continue her playing career, but ACL injuries cut her career short, which opened the door to her coaching career by becoming the equipment manager in her final year with the school.
Adams’ head coaching career began once she graduated from Loyola Marymount when she coached kids who were around the ages of six and seven years old.
After spending two and a half years coaching that age group, she got a coaching offer from Lawndale High School and coached its women’s team for 3 seasons from 2014 to 2017
Adams gave Lawndale a sweet taste of victory as she led her squad to its first school league championship in the 2017 season, which was something the school had never done before.
The COVID-19 pandemic put Adams’s coaching career on hold.
Once the courts reopened, she trained as a referee.
Her reffing career opened the door to more networking opportunities to get her name out there for coaching, and she ended up going back to Morningside High School for a year.
After coaching for her former high school, former LBCC basketball head coach Ollie Brent posted that he was hiring for head coach for women’s basketball.
“Many people we know mutually and other coaches that I had either mentored with or played for were recommending me. It feels good to know that people are speaking about you for opportunities that could be great for you, and that’s exactly what happened and it led me right here,” Adams said.
Adams accepted that head coaching offer, making her debut in the 2023-24 season.
As soon as Adams walked through the door, she made an immediate impact on her players, making sure they knew that they were a championship-caliber team.
In her first year as the LBCC women’s basketball head coach, Adams coached the Vikings to the state championship tournament for the first time since 1992.
This tournament run was the definition of a fairytale story, with #9 seed Vikings upsetting #8 seed Victor Valley in the second round and #1 seed Mt. SAC (whom they lost twice to in the regular season) in the third round to make it past regionals.
Although the Vikings lost to Butte College in the first round of the state championship tournament, they defied all odds stacked against them as LBCC making the state championship was just an afterthought to many people.
With the struggles that Adams faced with her ACL injuries in the past and trying to find a way to stay involved with the game of basketball, her experiences, and underdog mentality sparked motivation for many of her players.
“She showed me and the whole team unconditional support as well as confidence boosters. There are times during the season when you’re not going to be playing your best or maybe you feel you didn’t do your best, but she was there to lift me every game and make sure we always had a ‘next play’ or ‘next game’ mentality,” SCC South Player of the Year, Brillana Boyd said.
The inspiration she gave to her team for the game of basketball, also transitioned into life lessons centered around knowing how to always keep going and never give up.
“She is a big motivator and was always trying to motivate us even when we felt like we couldn’t do something. She always taught me to push through the hardest obstacles even when I’m tired, and that goes with life too. She always tries to motivate you somehow, someway and that’s how she is as a coach. Every coach motivates you, but she was more vocal for sure,” sophomore guard Haily Garcia said.
The influence and motivation that helped light a spark for the team led them to the fairytale run that the Vikings had in regionals, getting two upset victories over higher-seeded teams to reach the state championship tournament before getting knocked out in the first round.
Adams is even hungrier for a state championship following the first-round state tournament loss and is now preparing for an even better season for her squad in hopes of bringing the state championship to Long Beach.