“I’ve always loved basketball. It was one of the things I really had to work at. In short, it was a challenge.” These words and their message convey just who Rochelle Coleman, Paint Branch’s fourth-year Girls’ Varsity Basketball Head Coach, is as a player, coach, and community advocate.

Born in Washington, D.C., Coach Coleman moved to Montgomery County when she was three and started playing basketball at six. When she first started to play, she enjoyed the game but did not “really [feel] it was [her] sport until the age of 12,” she says.

It was around that time, in 8th grade at Benjamin Banneker Middle School, that Coach Coleman developed her basketball skills. It was a few years later, at Paint Branch, that Coleman truly made her mark.

After entering high school in 1998, Coleman blossomed as a basketball player the moment she became a part of the program. A four-year varsity starter, Coleman made it to states with the basketball team three out of the four years she played. In her senior year, she led the team to a state championship, while receiving numerous accolades and establishing a great reputation among the women’s basketball community in Maryland.

Despite her placement on the First Team All-County and the Washington Post All-Metropolitan (All-Met) First Team, Coleman always felt the need to improve. Looking back at her high school career, Coach Coleman states that she wishes she had focused more on improving her jumper as well as her handles. So much for being named one of the top 15 players in Maryland by USA Today and graduating as the all-time leading scorer for girls’ basketball.

Coleman wanted more.

Coleman received a full athletic scholarship to Syracuse University. While at Syracuse, she continued to set records for the Lady Orange. After finishing her career, she was Syracuse’s third all-time three-pointer scorer (152) and had the seventh all-time, highest three-point shooting percentage (32.5%). In her senior year, she ranked third in the Big East with 4.69 assists per game.

After graduating from Syracuse, Coleman decided to continue her studies at Slippery Rock University, where she studied sports management and worked as a graduate assistant coach for the women’s basketball team.

After finishing her Masters of Science in sport management at Slippery Rock, Coleman became actively involved in the DC Metro area. She saw that her talents as a basketball player and mentor provided her the opportunity to give back to the sport that developed her into who she is today. After leaving Slippery Rock, she worked as an intern for Five-Star Basketball of Greater Washington, Inc. and was eventually hired as a full-time employee. At Five-Star Basketball, an organization that provides guidance, mentorship and opportunities to its coaches, parents and players, Coleman assisted many aspiring players and constantly motivated them.

Coleman’s work at Five-Star Basketball was just one of the ways in which she displayed her talent as a coach, a motivator, and a humanitarian. One of the most impactful and touching experiences she had with her community-based work, however, was with the Hoops With Kids program she worked with in 2012. Hoops With Kids is a program that hires elite basketball players and utilizes them to mentor and guide kids overseas, in Coleman’s case, Israeli kids. This was perfect for Coleman, who sees basketball as a tool to unify those who are in need. In other words, she treats it with far more seriousness and dedicates herself to it more than one would for a mere game.

Coleman has worked with other local humanitarian groups such as KEEN of Greater Washington, a nonprofit volunteer-led organization that provides one-to-one recreational opportunities for children and young adults with developmental and physical disabilities, as well as efforts to improve learning ability such as Readers Make Leaders here at Paint Branch.

Coleman has always been well-aware of her capabilities and harnesses them in a way that makes her a star athlete, a strong leader, and a generous humanitarian and educator. Reminiscing on her past, Coleman states that playing beyond high school was much harder than most people perceive it to be. She notes that it requires lots of dedication and greater skill, both of which she possesses. “I did everything I could, and there isn’t much I could tell my younger self, other than to work on my fundamentals, because I strived for the best,” Coleman states.

Coach Coleman definitely goes down as one of the most talented, dedicated, and generous athletes and coaches not only in the history of Paint Branch basketball, but also in the history of the athletic program. She is a prime example of what comes out of hard work and the proper cultivation and preservation of talent.