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Marcia Pinder, winner of 10 state titles as Dillard High girls’ basketball coach, dies

Jordan McPherson
·5 min read

Marcia Pinder, regarded as Florida’s all-time winningest basketball coach and who guided the Fort Lauderdale Dillard Panthers girls’ basketball team to 10 state titles over the course of more than four decades, died Wednesday morning. She was 70.

“We from the Boys team would like to send condolences to the family of Marcia Pinder, our legendary girls team coach on her passing this morning,” Dillard assistant basketball coach Rubyne Burrows wrote from the Dillard boys’ basketball Twitter account. “If [you’re] from our community there’s a million funny stories you can think back on to make you smile for YEARS.”

Pinder had a 996-231 record during her 44-year career at Dillard. Under her watch, the Panthers won state titles in 1980, 1982, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2019. Only Jacksonville Ribault as a school, with 12 state titles, has more FHSAA girls’ basketball championships than Dillard did under Pinder’s watch.

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“Dillard High School lost a legend this morning,” state representative Omari Hardy, who attended Dillard, wrote on Facebook. “Coach Marcia Pinder was a 10-time state champion with nearly 1,000 career wins. She was a Hall-of-Famer. But more than that, she was a mentor, an advocate, a second mom to many of her players. She taught generations of young women how to excel on and off the court, and it was in that lasting, personal impact that she took the greatest pride.”

The 10th and final title, a 43-40 win over Ponte Vedra Nease, is one that she considered special above the rest. Not because of the round number, but because of the team that won it. Her two star seniors that season, Genovea Johnson and Raven White, had been part of the team since middle school. She had the opportunity to watch them grow through the years.

Her hope, she said after that 2019 championship, was that this would be the model for championship No. 11 and beyond.

“Not yet,” Pinder said, “but it’s coming.”

Dillard coach Marcia Pinder gives instructions to her team during a timeout against Jacksonville Paxon during the girls’ 5A basketball championship at The Lakeland Center on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015.
Dillard coach Marcia Pinder gives instructions to her team during a timeout against Jacksonville Paxon during the girls’ 5A basketball championship at The Lakeland Center on Saturday, Feb. 21, 2015.

She was named the Florida Dairy Farmers Girls’ Basketball Coach of the Year five times (2010-2013 and 2015), received the Morgan Wootten Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017 and was inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2014.

The Miami Herald, at its 2013 Broward Athletics Award banquet, honored Pinder with its lifetime achievement award.

“I was extremely surprised,” Pinder said at the ceremony. “I’m honored. Lifetime achievement, that says a lot. When you look around and get a standing ovation ... That was the icing on the cake.”

Pinder graduated from Bethune-Cookman in 1974, where she ran track, and was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2016. She started coaching the Dillard girls’ basketball team in 1976.

But Pinder’s view of her long, successful career doesn’t point to the win total or the 10 state championship rings. It goes beyond that.

“My biggest thrill,” Pinder said in 2014, “comes from the girls getting into college and pursuing their degrees. When you constantly see these players get to college, it makes you feel good. You don’t think about that last loss or last win. Some of them have turned out to be teachers and doctors. That is my Hall of Fame, right there.”

Tributes to Pinder from South Florida and from those in the college women’s basketball community at large flooded social media after the news of her death surfaced. They all shared a similar sentiment: Pinder was great as a basketball coach but an even better person.

University of Miami women’s basketball coach Katie Meier on Twitter called Pinder “a tremendous lady, coach [and] mentor.”

“The entire South [Florida] community mourns this loss as well as [women’s basketball] across the country,” Meier wrote. “YOU WILL BE MISSED.”

“You had such a positive impact on so many lives,” wrote St. Thomas Aquinas girls’ basketball coach Oliver Berens. “Thank you for all you did for girls basketball. You are a legend and will be greatly missed.”