On May 17, Batesburg-Leesville announced the hiring of Palmetto High School girls basketball coach Ashley Enwright to the same position with the Panthers. 

The addition of Enwright brings a familiar face and voice to the Batesburg-Leesville community. Enwright’s first coaching job came at the age of 24 when she worked as the coach for the girls basketball, volleyball and track and field teams at the town's middle school, where she also taught physical education.

That first job is an experience she still remembers fondly, telling the Chronicle that Batesburg-Leesville feels like home.

"When I left to get head coaching jobs at Crescent and Palmetto, I have always looked for that family feel,"  Enwright said. "And even though those jobs were beneficial and I was able to grow with those jobs, I still didn’t have that family feel that I had when I was at Batesburg.”

While she missed the community feeling as a whole, she holds a particular sense of gratitude for two people at the school, saying  she believes she owes her career development to former Batesburg-Leesville head coach Jessica Dennis and former Athletic Director Gary Phillips.

Dennis and Phillips were the ones who gave her that first middle school coaching job. 

“There is no me without them giving me a chance,” she says. 

From there, she coached and taught at Crescent High School and Palmetto High School. In that time away from Batesburg-Leesville, she developed as a teacher and a coach. As a teacher, she earned the South Carolina Teacher of the Year award for the subject of physical education according to Batesburg-Leesville’s press release announcing her hiring.

As a coach, she believes the years spent at Crescent and Palmetto taught her how to put the student athletes first and how to better support and care for her players as people.

“I think I’m more so able to put the student athlete first,” Enwright told the Chronicle. “I learned how to love my athletes in a way I never had before. It was always, you know, ‘Ball is first and do what you’re supposed to do in the classroom.' But I think I learned how to create a bond that goes beyond just basketball and school with this group of girls at Palmetto. I’m getting older, but I wouldn’t say a motherly figure, but I know how to love. I know how to love through adversity and know how to love through trials and I know how to give more of myself to develop the character that I desire in my athletes.”

When it comes to the play on the basketball court, Enwright expects her players to out-tough their opponents and to always be the hardest playing players on the floor. A trait that she said she displayed as a player.

“A Coach Enwright team looks like a Coach Enwright player,” she said. “They may not be the tallest player, they may not be the fastest player, but they’re gonna play the hardest. I didn’t get anywhere in my life from being the best. I just want to work hard. So my teams need to work harder than the other teams. That’s on the court, that’s in the classroom, that’s in the off-season.”