Kim Mulkey

Get After It!

Written by Holly Culpepper

Louisiana welcomes back the “Hammond Honey” Kim Mulkey. The Tickfaw native was fondly nicknamed this during the athlete state of her career. Before the nickname, there was not much opportunity for females to play locally, so this advanced athlete played with the boys on their team. A female on the boy’s team was not well received. She made to sit out during a game because of her gender. She still cheered for her team on the sidelines. By the time she got to high school, she had focused on Basketball and led her team to National Championships all four years. Not only was she a supreme athlete, but she also had the intellect as well maintaining a 4.0 GPA and was the valedictorian of her class. She was proud that Basketball would take care of her college education. Ensuring her players get their degree is one of her goals for her team, as she stated in an interview with LSU sports.

During her college years, she excelled in sports and academics, receiving prestigious scholarships and winning Olympic gold in 1984. After the Olympics, she returned to college to work on her Master’s in business, achieving all she ever wanted to achieve, and was ready to hang up the tennis shoes. She planned to become a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and travel the world, as she told me during our interview.

The University President saw something in her that she did not see in herself, and that was coaching.

She was pulled out of class by campus police and reluctantly talked into being an assistant coach for Leon Barrymore. During this time at Louisiana Tech, she taught herself how to recruit players and deal with rejection. She told me after her first player rejected her, it took two days to get over it. However, she did not let this get to her. She got over it and got back after it. Recruiting is much like sales; you must adjust or get left behind.

She remained the assistant coach until 1996 and was then the associate head coach until 2000. In 2000 she took the head coach position at Baylor. She took this program from the ground to the top five during her tenure there. Once again, fate intervened, and she is back in her home state as the head coach for LSU. The move to LSU, she says, is “good timing.” She has been led back to her home state at the right time. Her gut told her that this was the right move for her. She told me she relies on her gut quite often. Even when it comes to motivating her team, she relies on her gut. She believes gut feelings come from experience. She has many tactics to encourage, and it greatly depends on the player and the situation. The tools she uses range from intense to soft, video to paper. She says to me,

Nothing great in life is achieved without enthusiasm.

Any tactic she uses is executed with enthusiasm. “Give it everything you have,” she says. We all have bad days, feel sorry for ourselves, and want to get lazy, but as leaders, we must push through, “to whom much is given much is expected.”

Leaders need to set the tone, and it will trickle down. She contributes her success, motivation, and dedication to her personality. Some say she is “afraid of failing,” she says. She just does not like losing. She sees the possibility of failure as a motivating factor. She is not afraid of a challenge and welcomes them headon.

Success comes from doing your homework, being prepared, and a willingness to keep going.

We are glad to have this record-setter in the P-MAC and cannot wait to see our Lady Tigers become National Champions under Coach Kim!