Coach Sherri Anthony cuts the ribbon during the ceremony dedicating Nease High School's basketball court in her name. | Courtesy of Sherri Anthony
Published on January 6, 2025 at 4:28 pm
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Former Allen D. Nease High School girls basketball Coach Sherri Anthony has her fair share of accolades.
She’s been Teacher of the Year and National Coach of the Year, and she has been inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame and the Florida Association of Basketball Coaches’ Court of Legends.
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But Anthony’s latest honor came over the weekend when she got to cut the ceremonial ribbon on the basketball court that now bears her name.
The basketball court at Nease High School, where she coached the girls basketball team for 39 years, is now known as the Sherri Anthony Court.
For the occasion, Anthony was joined by her longtime assistant coach Bernie Blue as well as just a small fraction of the many students she coached during her time at Nease.
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Aside from a brief stint coaching at Flagler College, Anthony boasts a career spent at just Nease High School. During that time, she coached her teams to more than 700 wins, a state title and many more high-ranking placements and district titles.
“I hope that when these kids come through here and they see my name on the floor, they’ll say, ‘That was a person of integrity,’” Anthony said. “‘That was a person that was committed, and was passionate, was loyal, was dedicated to one school and one school only.’”
Although she has retired from Nease, Anthony didn’t manage to stay off the court for long.
These days, she works alongside Coach Kelly Stevenson as an assistant girls basketball coach at The Bolles School.
It’s a full-circle moment for Anthony — Stevenson was a member of her 1999 state championship team.
Stevenson is ecstatic to see Anthony recognized for all of her hard work at Nease.
“That’s just such a huge honor and well deserved,” Stevenson told Jacksonville Today. “All the time and sacrifices she’s made for that school and for St. Johns County — it’s definitely well deserved for her.”
Now that future generations of players and coaches will play on the court she coached so many games on, Anthony offered some advice of her own.
“Players will live up to the expectations you have for them,” Anthony said.
“We’ve had over 20-something student athletes go to college and play on a scholarship, and the ones who didn’t, you coach them just as hard and love them just as much,” she said. “You didn’t shy away from them just because they didn’t have those aspirations. But you did have an expectation of winning, and winning with dignity, integrity and class.”
