Bishop remembers years at MCC as her ‘dream job’
When she reflects on her 33 years as an instructor and former head women’s basketball
coach at Meridian Community College, Barbara Bishop says she has no regrets about
the career path she chose in life.
“If I had the chance to go back and do it all again, I would still choose my time teaching and coaching at MCC because that was my dream job,” Bishop said. “I have no doubt the wonderful experiences that I had at MCC impacted my life in so many ways. I was around several great people in the physical education department. There was a special camaraderie. We just enjoyed each other and enjoyed our jobs.”
A 1972 graduate of Northeast Lauderdale High School, Bishop, then Barbara Lee, played for the Lady Trojans basketball team.
“My sister had played basketball before me, and I guess that was just my destiny. I was going to follow along in her footsteps,” she recalled.
After graduation, Bishop enrolled in then-Meridian Junior College, where she was a Lady Eagles basketball team member. During her sophomore year, the Lady Eagles traveled to Bay City, Mich., to play in the 1974 Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) National Women’s Basketball Tournament junior college division. It was the year before the National Junior College Athletics Association would become the first of the three major national collegiate athletic associations to adopt women’s athletics and almost a decade before the NCAA held its first Division 1 Women’s Basketball National Championship in 1982.
“James Cameron, at the time, was the coach, and he was a great motivator. We just played for the love of the game,” she said.
One of 16 teams to receive a bid to the tournament, the Lady Eagles won their first-round game but then were eliminated in the next round before exiting the tournament with a loss in their first consolation game.
“It was a great experience to be able to see a different part of the country than most of us had ever seen,” Bishop recalled of the trip to Michigan. “It was a great enlightening experience to see other people and how they played basketball.”
The Lady Eagles made the trip on a bus shared with the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College team, who had won the championship the previous year.
“That was kind of taxing to have two opponents riding together, but it was fun,” she added.
Bishop earned her associate degree in University Transfer from MCC that spring; then, she went on to Mississippi University for Women on a basketball scholarship. She played for the W’s basketball team for two years before receiving her bachelor’s degree in physical education with a minor in business education in 1976.
Returning to Meridian, she taught business and physical education classes at Lamar School for two years and coached slow-pitch softball and basketball. She then spent two years at Kate Griffin Junior High School, where she coached basketball and track and taught physical education.
After earning her master’s degree in physical education from Mississippi State University in 1980, her dream job materialized.
“My dream job was to return to my beloved MCC to teach and coach,” she said. “I had such a good experience as a student at MCC that I just thought it would be divine to come back as a teacher and a coach. I really took a pay cut to go from a junior high school to a college, but that was okay because that is where I wanted to be. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it.”
Bishop served as head women’s basketball coach, an assistant slow-pitch softball coach and a full-time instructor in the physical education department from 1980 until 1992. She decided her coaching duties took too much time away from her responsibilities to her family and her sons. Her husband, Austin Bishop, a long-time Meridian sports reporter, worked many nights covering area high school and college sports. The two first met while he was covering Lady Eagles basketball games.
“It was very challenging as a mother with two young sons to be out on the road a lot coaching and recruiting,” she said. “I finally decided being a mother was more important to me.”
Although she was no longer coaching, Bishop continued to teach physical education courses, first aid and CPR, and wellness classes at MCC until she retired in 2013 after 33 years at the community college.
“The friendships that I developed while coaching are still very special to me,” she noted. “I don’t know many coaches and players today who have that special bond because of the way athletics has changed. I still have some players who will call and text me. I will answer my phone, and they will say. ‘Hello, mom!’ There was a special bond between players and coaches back then.”
Bishop stays busy with hobbies these days, including stained glass work, reading and sewing quilt tops and face masks during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“During the pandemic, I helped my mother-in-law sew masks. I thought it would be a great project for her, but I got pulled into it, too. My sewing before that was pretty limited,” she laughed. “Still, it was fulfilling work. We felt like we were meeting the needs of some people at the time. By the last count, she said she had made over 600 masks. I won’t say I was part of all 600, but I helped her.”
Bishop also enjoys spending time with her family. Her husband of 34 years, Austin, also serves as pastor of the Great Commission Assembly of God in Philadelphia, where she is actively involved. She loves spending time with her son and daughter-in-law, Ryan and Cassidy Satcher, who live in Brandon with their two children, Harper, 8, and Easton, 5. Their other son, Bradley Bishop, is a veterinarian who lives in Charlotte, N.C.
“We haven’t seen Bradley since the pandemic started,” she said, noting he was coming for a visit in the coming weeks and the Bishops plan to return the visit in July. “We had just visited him before the lockdown began, but it has been a long, long year without seeing him. We are ready to take our chances and see him.”