“This has been a dream of mine for a very, very long time,” says James Adams, the new co-head women’s basketball coach for Madison College. “I’m excited about this upcoming season and our potential.”
Adams, who had been an assistant head coach for Madison College the past three seasons, will work in tandem the upcoming 2022-23 women’s basketball season to serve as co-head coach with Mike Mayfield, a veteran coach who will be entering his 17th season with Madison College.
“I am so excited to work with Mike Mayfield. To me, he has GOAT status … he’s been doing this for such a long time,” Adams tells Madison365. “Mike is a legendary coach. I love working with him. We really get along and I respect him. As a coach, his knowledge and his reputation are respected around the community.”
The duo replaces Lois Heeren, who retired from coaching after seven years with the WolfPack, and more than 30 in collegiate basketball. Heeren recently took over as the department’s associate athletic director.
For Adams, he says, it has been “quite a basketball journey.”
“Honestly, it’s been years of dedication, desire, and just motivation … I was really motivated to be where I’m at today and I really love basketball and I love this community,” Adams says. “Going back 20 years, I never thought I’d be in this position at this level. I never thought I’d be in a position as an assistant college coach first let alone be the head college coach.
“What excites me the most is that I get an opportunity to share my knowledge, my abilities, my hard work and dedication and my desire to coach women at the collegiate level,” he adds. “And now getting the chance to lead the team, it’s such an exciting moment and an exciting opportunity.”
Adams got his coaching start on the boys’ side, as an assistant coach at Madison West High School under longtime coach Boyce Hodge.
“To this day, I appreciate Coach Hodge giving me that shot because he sparked that real interest in being a coach on a level where it wasn’t all about walking the sidelines and subbing kids. He was teaching me how to be more strategic and how to be a teacher and how to understand the game on a different level,” Adams says. “I remember having conversations with him during practices and after practices and learning how he visualized the game and how he strategically thought about how to defend a team. That stuck with me and resonated with me for a very long time.”
After serving as Oregon High School’s junior varsity coach from 2007-2010, Adams became well known for leading the Madison East varsity program from 2011-2019. He earned Big Eight Conference Coach of the Year honors in 2018 after leading Madison East to a runner-up finish in the league standings. Adams won three consecutive regional titles and guided the Purgolders to back-to-back sectional final appearances.
A native of Gary, Indiana, Adams says that he has been a proud Madisonian for over 30 years and he really enjoyed becoming a part of the community. That, he says, “is really important in my job as co-head coach at Madison College.”
“Being here so long, and doing the things that I’ve done in the community for so many years … I felt like I had been born here,” he says. “Coaching at Madison East for nine years was important. It was an essential part of my development because the east side of Madison is the heart and soul of the community. It’s a real community-based location – blue-collar folks working hard to maintain and manage and I got an opportunity to become engulfed in that community with the East High School (head coach) position. It is the heart and soul of who I am as a coach.
“I learned a lot from that experience but I also felt the east side was able to humble me as a coach, as well,” he adds. “Because I faced adversities that I didn’t think I ever face. And I was able to meet those challenges and meet those adversities and meet those areas where I knew I had to figure it out, or it was gonna figure me out.”
Adams knew it was time to expand his abilities when he left East to take it to the next level when he became an assistant coach at Madison College three years ago.
“I think I have the tools and the experience to help navigate these students to Madison College. It is no longer seen as a trade school on the east side. We’re out there looking for those Madison East, Madison West, Madison Memorial, and Madison La Follette [high school] student-athletes to come in and better themselves not only in the classroom but on the court. So we’re trying to recruit as many kids in the community as we possibly can … community kids.
“I think my connections with the community with all the stuff I’m involved in and all the people that I know will help me a lot … from the basketball training, from the AAU from coaching at East for a number of years,” he adds.
Adams was elated to see his former player Alysha Justice recently taking over at Madison East.
“That’s an amazing situation. I know that she will be a big help in navigating student-athletes over to Madison College. As will my connections with [Madison Memorial High School Coach] Marques [Flowers] and [Madison La Follette Coach] Will [Green] and being in the Big 8 is a plus. I have reached out to those guys in the past and will continue to do so. I want these kids to understand that we are here and we are really serious about basketball. I mean, have you ever been to Madison East games before I left? We were packing gyms. Girls’ basketball was definitely on the rise as far as attendance as far as visibility, just awareness in general.
“So we want to embark on that same level of marketing and recruitment at Madison College. This is going to be huge as we try to build that intensity within the community to get them to come out.”
In Adams’ first year as an assistant, Madison College finished 17-11. After a year canceled because of COVID, the Wolfpack finished a disappointing 5-19 last year, but Adams is looking to turn things around in 2022-23.
“The short-term goal is to jump off the block. swinging hard, to be honest. Like you want to set a tone right away,” Adams says. “We have about nine to 10 incoming freshmen that are pretty good. We have about three players that are returning from last year and a transfer. Taylor Ripp (averaging 10.2 points per game) was second-team all-conference last year for us. She will be a leader. The following year after next year, we’re moving into Division 2, so we’ll be able to offer some scholarship money to student-athletes. So our recruitment process will be able to expand a little bit more and we’ll be able to compete with the other Division 2 schools in the state.
“I’m going to do my best to make Madison proud with this opportunity and try to do my best to be an ambassador for the community and ambassador for the east side as we hopefully get people to understand why they should come out and support this team and be a part of this. We’re excited about the future.”
