MCC Thunder Coach has Watonga in His Blood

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  • MCC Thunder Coach has Watonga in His Blood
    MCC Thunder Coach has Watonga in His Blood
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Chelvin Webb is a man passionate about two things – reaching kids and basketball. The 24-year-old assistant coach with strong Watonga ties is using one to accomplish the other.

Webb attended school in Watonga for a time, in preschool, then for the fifth and seventh grade. Even when he wasn’t in school here, he was often in town, seeing his friends, attending family events, and attending things like Homecoming and the Cheese Festival. After he graduated from South Moore High School in 2014, he attended Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa, where he walked-on in basketball and earned the Jared Weiberg Scholarship. His second semester, Webb was a member of the basketball team. The following year he went to Friends University in Wichita on a basketball scholarship but was dissatisfied with the atmosphere and returned to Northern Oklahoma Colleges as a red shirt. He played his sophomore year there, almost making it to the national playoffs in that division.

The next season, Webb attended Manhattan Christian College in Manhattan, Kan., playing basketball for the Thunder until he ruptured his Achilles tendon. His recovery, recorded and posted regularly on YouTube, was inspirational to many followers in the same situation. While he was healing, Webb had a medical red shirt, meaning he had two more years of eligibility. He was able to play those two years, earning back to back all conference and all region honors.

In March, he was in Leesburg, Maryland at the national N C C A A Division 2 tournament when the virus shut everything down. By that time, Webb had decided he would become a coach and was named as an assistant coach with a specialty in skill development even though he won’t graduate until December. He is coaching at Manhattan, where he is a student.

Asked what drew him to coaching, Webb was direct and to the point.

“My grandmother has a lot of sons and grndsons. She understood it (basketball) kept me grounded and out of trouble.” Later, he came to understand that if he spent time in the gym, it could help him pay for college.

“I knew then that when I put the ball down I could give vack through something I am passionate about. It’s kind of like a ministry. You get a calling to get through to these kids, reach these kids, wherever they are middle school, high school, college.”

Webb has helped middle school players for two years, and that has helped him both as a player and as a mentor.

“Coaches learn the sport differently, look at it differently. I can reach these kids because I’m passionate about it.”

Webb credits his family with much of his success. They include his mother Sharita Reynolds, of OKC; Pastor John Miller, a Watonga native who is in Fayetteville, North Carolina planting a church and ministry there, his grandmother, April Swanegan, a Watonga fixture; his great grandmother Lola Bivens, of Watonga; and his grandmother, Watonga native Brenda Miller Wrighton, now of Lawton.

Connie Burcham can be reached at Editor@WatongaRepublican.com