‘One PERSON can’t do it ALONE’
UCA interim basketball coach finds choir relieves stress
Anthony Boone isn’t the typical college basketball coach. While Boone, 43, interim head coach of the University of Central Arkansas men’s team, played college basketball, he also checks several unusual boxes: He has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Ole Miss, he earned a master’s degree in mathematics from Ole Miss, and he is a star tenor in the Chancel Choir at Conway’s First United Methodist Church.
“I don’t know what we’d do without him,” said Janet Gingerich, the church’s director of music and worship ministries. “He is the dream choir member. He’s as dedicated as he can be. He is passionate about what he does. He watches like a hawk. He’s incredibly musical and always supportive. He’s the most positive person you can imagine.”
Jerry Biebesheimer, a longtime bass in the Chancel Choir, agreed.
“It is always a happy moment when a new member joins the choir and understands right away what the commitment entails,” Biebesheimer said. “Anthony was one of those. Maybe it is because singing in a good choir is like being on a sports team — one person can’t do it alone, but one person can louse it up alone.
“That’s Anthony — a good singer, good team member, fun guy.”
Boone was born in Helena. His father, Lynn Boone, is from Plumerville; his mother, Carolyn Boone, is from Holly Grove. Anthony Boone grew up mostly in West Helena.
He played basketball and golf at Helena-West Helena Central High School. His father had picked up golf as a young man, and Boone started playing that sport when
he was about 8. But basketball — and choir — were where he excelled. He made the state’s all-sophomore team before earning all-state honors two years on the floor, but he bettered that in the choir room — four years all-region and three years all-state.
He was salutatorian of his 1994 graduating class at Central.
His younger brother, Michael Boone, was involved with football, basketball, track and field, and choir at Central. He went on to play football for the Rebels and walked on the basketball team during his brother’s junior and senior seasons.
Anthony Boone had lots of offers to play college basketball, narrowing his choices to Tulsa, Southern Illinois and Texas Tech, besides Ole Miss.
“The program wasn’t very good before I got there, but they were in the [Southeastern Conference], and it was also really close to Helena, less than an hour and a half,” he said.
He played under Rob Evans and later Rod Barnes from 1994-98, helping the Rebels to two straight 20-win seasons for the first time in 60 years, according to ucasports.com. While Boone’s playing career was marred by four knee surgeries, he started 79 of 94 games, averaging 7.2 points and 4.8 rebounds per game.
But then, like now, there was much more to Boone than met the eye.
He became the second Ole Miss athlete to have his number retired. Archie Manning, the former Rebel and NFL quarterback and father of Peyton and Eli Manning, had been the first. Following his senior season, Boone was a finalist for the Basketball Hall of Fame’s Chip Hilton Award, given to a player “who demonstrates character on and off the court.” Boone was also a two-time selection to the SEC’s Academic Honor Roll. He has also been inducted into the Ole Miss Hall of Fame.
He settled on chemical engineering as a major because he enjoyed both chemistry and math in high school. But with his degree in hand, one interview with a chemical plant changed the course of his future.
“There weren’t any positions open, but they wanted to interview me anyway,” he remembered. “I thought, ‘This is not what I want to do.’ Just going into the environment of where it was, and it was working with people, but not working with people. It would’ve been a lot of solitary work.”
So he decided on graduate school, and he worked as a graduate assistant under Barnes, who by that time had succeeded Evans. Coaching wouldn’t be solitary work.
With his master’s degree in hand, Boone took his first coaching job as an assistant at Murray State University in Kentucky under Tevester Anderson, a longtime SEC assistant who had ties to Barnes. Boone spent three years at Murray State before following Anderson to Jackson State University in Mississippi for six seasons, during which Boone spent a semester teaching math.
“I enjoyed it, and I would’ve kept going, but I felt the time I had to travel with the team took away from the classroom,” Boone said.
From there, Russ Pennell, who had also been an assistant during Boone’s playing days at Ole Miss, tabbed him as his assistant at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. They were there from 2009-13, then made the move together to the Phoenix Mercury of the Women’s National Basketball Association.
Pennell took the reins at UCA, his alma mater, in 2014 for a massive rebuilding project and brought Boone with him as associate head coach. When Pennell announced in December 2019 that he was taking a leave of absence, UCA Athletic Director Brad Teague named Boone interim head coach. Pennell and UCA announced recently he would not return, so Boone will continue in the position for the rest of the season.
“Coach Boone has been an integral component of the program’s success over the past several years,” Teague said. “The improvements in academics, community service, recruiting — Anthony has had a large hand in this success. He certainly understands what is expected at UCA and for our student-athletes.
“Coach Boone is as solid an individual as I have been around, and I am confident in his abilities and his leadership.”
During Pennell and Boone’s tenure, the Bears have played at Duke, Pepperdine, Baylor, Georgetown, Wichita State, Utah, Marquette, Wisconsin, UCLA, Indiana and Michigan.
“It’s hard having to play the kind of schedule we play, but what’s been most enjoyable about UCA is, I think where we work is ideal for what college athletics is supposed to be about,” Boone said. “We understand that’s what we have to do, and we are very happy to do it. We think it gives the guys great experiences. They get to see great programs up close; they get to play in great venues.”
He said such a schedule gets recruits motivated to work out and prepare for “great places and great competition.”
While at Ole Miss, Boone met his wife, Jennifer, a soccer player from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. They were married in August 2000, a day before they set off in a U-Haul truck for Murray State. While he was coaching basketball, she coached soccer there for a couple of years and another year at Murray High School before their daughter Rebecca, now 16 and a sophomore at Conway High School, was born. Daughter Lyndsey, 9, is in third grade.
Both girls play basketball and soccer. Both have also inherited their parents’ musical talent. Both sing, and Lyndsey plays ukulele. Rebecca started playing euphonium (like her mom) as a fourth-grader; she also plays violin, viola and cello.
Boone, who said he was as involved in choir in high school as he was in basketball, had grown up Baptist but joined the United Methodist Church after marrying Jennifer.
“When we lived in Mississippi, I sang in the choir at Madison United Methodist Church,” he said. “When we moved to Arizona, we joined a really small church, and after a couple of years, I ended up taking over the music there. It was a very small church and a very small operation, but I got to do that for my last couple of years in Arizona.”
After their move to Conway, Rebecca was involved in a summer activity at FUMC and told Janet Gingerich, the church’s director of music and worship ministries, that her father had been the music director at their previous church.
“As soon as I came to church, Janet spotted me and was standing right in my face asking me to join the choir,” Boone remembered, chuckling.
But he said he wasn’t sure his junior high and high school choir training would suffice.
“There are some very, very, very talented people in our choir,” he said. “So many of them actually studied music in college; there are a number of choir directors who are part of our choir and also some opera singers.
“I was a pretty good choir student in high school. I did better in choir than I did in basketball, but those people were on another level as far as music background. There are times when I feel — I don’t want to say intimidated or inadequate, but that’s about what it is. But everyone is so welcoming and makes me feel like I’m a part of that family.”
He has been a popular addition to the choir.
“In spite of a ridiculously busy schedule, when he is in town, he is at rehearsals and Sunday warm-ups on time, and he takes his music seriously,” Biebesheimer said. “And he is great fun to have around and enjoys a good time with the best of them. That is almost as important in a choir as being a good singer.”
During basketball season, Boone’s choir participation depends on the team’s schedule. But on a recent Sunday, Rebecca accompanied her father on cello as he soloed on “This Little Light of Mine.”
“I don’t know if there’s anything I do that makes me happier or brings me any more joy than getting to do things like that with Rebecca and Lyndsey,” he said.
Since becoming interim head coach, he said, he’s had a little more stress than usual, which makes his time at FUMC all the more important.
“I enjoy being around our [players], and I certainly enjoy what I do a great deal,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine being in another line of work, but my highlights are typically Wednesday nights at choir practice, [when we don’t have a game], and then Sunday mornings, when we have our services.”
Not what you’d expect from a typical college coach, but Boone is anything but typical.
I don’t know if there’s anything I do that makes me happier or brings me any more joy.” Anthony Boone INTERIM MEN’S BASKETBALL HEAD COACH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL ARKANSAS