That Thomasville Middle School eighth-grader Jayah McCoggle is an excellent basketball player should come as no surprise to anyone who knows her family. Her late grandfather, Dr. William McCoggle, was a basketball coach for over 30 years at Palmetto High School in Miami and is a member of the Florida A&M athletic Hall of Fame. Her father, Tavarius McCoggle, was also a coach and a very good player in his own right. An uncle played basketball overseas. The question never was would Jayah McCoggle be a good player. Instead, it was how good of a player would she become?
The interesting thing about McCoggle is prior to her sixth-grade year, she had never played competitive basketball. She had been to camps and she had worked with her father on the fundamentals of the game. She hadn’t, however, played any organized basketball. That year, she went out for the team and earned a roster spot. The reason she wasn’t able to play basketball was simple: her schedule wouldn’t allow it. McCoggle was also participating in gymnastics and there wasn’t time to do both. So she worked out with her father at the gym and went to gymnastics the rest of the time. By the time she was in the sixth grade, she had worked her schedule to the point that she could go out for basketball. “I just love basketball,” she says. “I just love the game. That’s all I can say.”
One thing McCoggle immediately picked up on from the coaches in her family is the importance of hard work and being coachable. She trusts her coaches and she does what they say. As a result, the shooting guard/point guard, who averages about eight points per game, played up this year with the junior varsity team. “I wasn’t intimidated playing with the high school girls. It was a little shaky at first but when they saw I could play, they opened up to me,” she says.
McCoggle has the kind of talent that allows her to completely take over a game – even when playing against high school girls. For example, against Worth County this year, most of her teammates ended up in foul trouble. The game was tight and someone needed to step up and lead the team. McCoggle took the team on her back, scored at will late in the game, and helped guide Thomasville Middle to a one-point victory. Performances like that earned her a spot in the eighth-grade all-star game at Valwood Scho
ol in Valdosta. McCoggle played point guard in that game and scored 10 points.
In addition to basketball, McCoggle cheers, plays soccer, and takes tumbling classes. Of the other sports, soccer is her next favorite. A midfielder/striker turned keeper, McCoggle loves soccer almost as much as she loves basketball. “Somebody told me I looked like I could play. So I started playing in the sixth grade,” she says. She loves playing keeper and takes her job of keeping the other team out of the net seriously. She is an integral part of a talented TMS team that went 8-1-1 this year. “I love playing keeper. I can help our team win if I keep the other team from scoring,” she says.
As hectic as her schedule is, academics always come first. Her mother, Shemika Lucas, is uncompromising in the expectations she places on grades. “It’s all or nothing. She is going to make good grades in everything or she isn’t going to play anything at all. I’m impressed with how she plays all these sports and keeps up her grades. She has her own system of getting things done that works for her,” says Lucas.
McCoggle isn’t the only one affected by such a hectic schedule. “She keeps me on my toes. I’m finishing my doctorate and I have to watch my grades. I can’t bring home a grade that I wouldn’t tolerate from her. She checks up on those kinds of things,” laughs Lucas.
As one might expect, growing up in a family of coaches, Jayah McCoggle has been getting advice her whole life. What is the most significant bit of advice she has received? It came from her father. “He taught me to work hard, keep pushing, and most of all, have fun.”
Favorites:
• Basketball team: Miami Heat
• Player: Dwayne Wade
• Sport you wish you could play: Softball
• Subject: Math
• Least favorite: Social studies
• Person to meet: Michael Jordan
Rising Star/South Georgia/June 2014
Jayah McCoggle
Thomasville Middle School
Thomasville, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Athletics runs deep in TMS eighth grader’s family
Coach Mccoggle at Palmetto was a seriously/ funny mentor. He demanded manners yet encouraged a playful approach to life. He had all of us down to the Orange Bowl arena or whatever it was, selling hot dogs, attending the Bruce Springsteen concert for free back around 1986. He used to say, “Sit on your buckem”, and many other Mccoggle-isms.He kept a deadpan face throughout but remembered every single one of our names… Cracked us up and we all looked forward to gym/ PE with him. God bless him and his.