Meet Coach Annette Kennedy

Coach Kennedy led her BTW Lady Hornet basketball team to twelve state tournament appearances. She won three state titles and was inducted into the Oklahoma Girl's Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in June 2019 and into the Booker T. Washington Ring of Honor  in 2020.

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Coach Kennedy learned to love basketball because her father, Buddy Kennedy, was a football and basketball coach, and her family lived on school grounds in Hinton, Oklahoma, directly behind the gym.  Starting in third grade, Coach Kennedy spent countless hours in that gym, doing her best to keep up with high school practices and shooting for hours on end. 

 

Coach Kennedy’s family moved to Sperry, Oklahoma as she entered ninth grade, and her father became her high school coach.  This meant she could continue to devote hours to the gym, and she and her dad spent countless hours there when they weren’t working together on the family cattle ranch.  She continued her playing career at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa and then spent her final two years playing for East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma. She graduated in 1989 with a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education and a minor in Biology.

 

After spending a few years teaching and coaching in Tyrone, OK and at Northern Oklahoma College, Coach Kennedy returned to the Tulsa area to help her then-retired father in the ranching business and accepted a position with Booker T. Washington as a physical education teacher and the head girls’s basketball coach.  Over twenty years at BTW she has taught Biology, Health, Physical Education, Outdoor Education, and Theory of Knowledge. She coached golf, softball, baseball, tennis, and basketball. She was the Booker T. Washington Teacher of the Year in 2008, and she earned her Master’s degree in Administrative Leadership and her certification as a principal that same year.  

 

Basketball has always reigned supreme for Coach Kennedy. In nineteen years at BTW she coached 500 games. She led her Lady Hornets teams to 373 wins and set several records for BTW, including winning the first ever state championship for the Lady Hornets and winning the most games in one season for BTW Lady Hornet basketball. She led her team to numerous conference, regional, and area championships. Her team made twelve state tournament appearances total, seven of them in 5A and five of them in 6A. Of her twelve trips to the state tournament, she won three times, twice in 5A (2008 and 2009) and once in 6A (2013) and finished runner-up once. In June 2019, Coach Kennedy was inducted into the Oklahoma Girl's Basketball Coaches Hall of Fame and into Booker T. Washington's Ring of Honor in 2020.

 

Coach Kennedy has retired from coaching basketball but continues to teach at BTW. She hosts clinics for children between the ages of 7-18, focusing on teaching basketball fundamentals and passing on her love of the game to students. Coach Kennedy also does private one-on-one coaching.