After two decades, Clover girls basketball coach Sherer Hopkins announces retirement
A Clover legend is saying goodbye.
Sherer Hopkins, the head coach of the Clover High School girls basketball program for two decades, has announced her retirement from the Blue Eagle helm. She leaves as the winningest coach in program history with an overall record of 346-172.
She also earned 10 region titles, nine region Coach of the Year awards, four state championship appearances (2000, 2005, 2020, 2021), as well as the only state title in program history, which came in 2021.
“Coach Hopkins has led our girls basketball program to a very high level of success for a very long time,” Clover athletic director and head boys basketball coach Bailey Jackson said in a statement. “More importantly, she has been an outstanding role model for all our student-athletes. We will miss her on the sidelines and appreciate all her hard work and dedication.”
It’s not hyperbole to say that Hopkins is inextricably linked to Clover girls basketball.
The veteran coach was born in Clover. Her father was Clover High School’s principal while she was growing up, and she was a star for the Blue Eagles as a basketball player before graduating in 1991.
After playing basketball and earning a mathematics degree at Francis Marion University in Florence in 1996, she returned to her hometown two years later to build the girls basketball program. She’d serve the program for the better part of the next 24 years, taking two one-year breaks in the middle. (In 2007-08, she stepped down from the job to spend more time with her family. And in 2013, she took a year off to recover from surgery after a malignant tumor was found in her brain.)
The 2020-21 season was a particularly special one for Hopkins. That team, led by several seniors including program all-time leading scorer Aylesha Wade, made it back to the state championship game after losing on that stage a year prior — and won it.
Hopkins won it for the whole Clover community, she said at the time.
“It was certainly worth the wait,” Hopkins told The Herald at the time. She added, “I’m just so happy for us and for our community, who — you saw — all came out to support us.”
Per Clover school district spokesperson Bryan Dillon, Clover will begin its search for the next girls basketball coach immediately.
This story was originally published March 31, 2022 at 4:37 PM.
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