That Sports Girl: The New York Times Features Granbury HS Girls Coach Leta Andrews

And she deserves it.  The 73-year old boasts a career that has spanned 49 years, earned her 1,346 wins and one state championship, coming when she coached the Corpus Christi girls team in 1990.  In December, she earned her 1,334th victory, passing Robert Hughes, the retired FW Dunbar boys' coach, as the winningest high school basketball coach in the country.

I did a story on her a few years ago.  She knocked my socks off then and is still an impressive figure.  What an inspiration: a woman at her age, shaping young student-athletes and keeping herself in phenomenal shape both mentally and physically.

She also possesses something that I feel too many coaches don't: a sense of discipline and expectation.  Amy Acuff, the Olympic high jumper who played on her 1990 state title team says as much in the article:

"I think people often are afraid to discipline kids; they feel it is too harsh or that the kid won't love you. But I think the root of respect and love is a person expecting and demanding that you be as good as you can be every single moment."

Andrews doesn't plan on slowing down.

Andrews longs for more diversity on her team and more gym rats, players who want to win as badly as she does. "Don't run around like a chicken with your head cut off," she scolded her offense Monday. But she is not ready to retire. The only win that is important, she said, is the next one.

"I'm not ready to turn this over to these younger coaches," Andrews told her husband recently. "They just don't demand enough."

My kind of coach.  Not a participant ribbon in sight.