Page 16 - Alcorn Magazine - Spring, 2019

A Winning Legacy
Longtime Men’s and Women’s Tennis Coach Anthony Dodgen Retires
One of the winningest coaches in the history of Alcorn State University athletics, Anthony Dodgen retired at the end of the 2017-18 scal school year.
Dodgen won 12 SWAC Championships, which included eight on the men’s side and four on the women’s. Among head coaches from all sports at Alcorn, the 12 SWAC titles are the third most in school history and the most for any Olympic sport.
Dodgen also claims two more championships personally,including the 2006 men’s title and the 2015 women’s crown. In those seasons, Alcorn fell in the championship match but the winning team later had to vacate the title due to NCAA sanctions.
Nevertheless, Dodgen coached the men and/or the women to the - nals of the SWAC Championships in 18 of his 21 seasons.
“ e tennis program here has been a group of brothers and sisters. We’ve been a very tight family, and it’s been that way for all my years. e men and women come in from all over the world and practice
together, play together, eat together, and do everything together. We take great pride in working hard and doing things the right way,” Dodgen said. “None of this would have ever worked if it wasn’t for the family environment that our program created.”
Dodgen came to Alcorn in the fall of 1996. He had spent the previous 17 seasons as a high school coach, including seven years at St. Aloysius High School in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and 10 years at Chamber- lain-Hunt Academy in Port Gibson, Mississippi.
“I was hired directly by the president at the time, who was Dr. Clin- ton Bristow Jr. He had gotten word that I was a successful tennis coach in Vicksburg, and he also liked that I was a mathematics in- structor as well,” Dodgen said.
Dodgen, who has also worked in the mathematics department at Al- corn for 21 years, took over the tennis program from Samuel West, who coached tennis and basketball at the time. President Bristow wanted to put more of an emphasis on tennis, including the sport having its own coach.
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