Jackson Free Press

Dressed simply in maroon polo shirts and khakis, the two coaches for the Germantown Lady Mavericks cross the basketball court side-by-side, laughing at some shared joke. There is an ease about them that is immediately recognizable--probably because Jamie and Dave Glasgow are not simply a coaching team. They are husband and wife.

The Glasgows met while both worked and coached at Indianola Academy in Indianola. Dave headed the boys' basketball team, and Jamie was the girls' basketball assistant coach. After seeing her around school and the gym, Dave decided to ask Jamie out. "She was the best-looking thing I'd ever seen," he says. "I couldn't let her get away." Jamie accepted, and love 
quickly blossomed.

"We went out after Christmas and were married at the end of May,'' Jamie says with a laugh.

Ten years later, the coaching duo sits together on the Germantown High School bench in Madison. This is Jamie's second year as head coach of the girls' basketball team, and Dave joined her 
as her assistant.

The couple says the key to working together at their jobs as well as at home is to have a sense of humor, and have fun. "We laugh a lot," Jamie says.

"I've learned how to take orders at home, and I can take them at work, too," Dave adds, jokingly.

And together, they are bringing the Lady Mavericks to life. The team is 11-13 in this year's start, and a markedly better team than last year when they went 6-20.

They say that being married makes the coaching relationship easier.

"I don't feel like I'm the head coach and he is the assistant. We really work together. It's not like the normal head coach-assistant coach relationship where you are like, 'This is what I'm thinking, but I'm not going to say it.' We are comfortable saying what we want to say and what we think," Jamie says. "When I ask questions, I want his opinion."

"I love it," Dave adds.

This can make for some interesting post-game nights. "For a lot of years when we were coaching separate teams, we never could seen to win on the same night," Dave says. "It seemed like the boys would win and the girls would lose, or the girls would win and the boys would lose. So (one of us) would be happy, but also upset that the other team lost. One time, we were driving home from a game and she was sitting behind me and she leaned up and said, 'Are you ready to talk yet?' and I said, 'No'. She just said OK and sat back. We just both knew how the other one felt."

Sometimes the demands of coaching have been tough on the family. Before Germantown, they coached in Union, Miss. Dave coached boys, and Jamie coached the girls. But each also coached the middle-school teams. Having games five nights a week wasn't easy. "November and December were awful," he says.

"And we did it with two little girls on our hip. They don't know anything but being in the gym," Dave says.

Those two little girls, 7-year-old Meg and 6-year-old Julia, have soaked it all in and are up-and-coming basketball players themselves. "Our girls now play Upward (basketball). So our Saturdays are spent with them in Upward Basketball, " 
Jamie says.

The little girls are taking after their mom, who played at Pillow Academy and Delta State University. "She was good. She was real good. She can still play when she's not pregnant," Dave says.

Right now she can't, though. Jamie is expecting the couple's third child July 16.