Former SEC coach takes over Sweet Water volleyball

The Sweet Water High volleyball program has a new head coach this season as Mike Tucker takes the reins of the program.

Tucker, entering his 28th season as a volleyball coach, is an alumnus of the University of West Alabama and spent plenty of time in Sweet Water during his formative years.

“I started in high school in Homa, La. My family is originally from Sweet Water but my family moved to New Orleans. So I grew up in New Orleans,” Tucker said. “Sweet Water is where I always went for family reunions and I stayed there with my grandmother in the summers. So I kind of always looked at Sweet Water as home. My family had moved away from Sweet Water for 37 years and then moved back here when my dad retired from the railroad and have been there ever since.”

With his deep Marengo County connections, the former Livingston University was a perfect choice for Tucker.

“I ended up going to Livingston and got my degree there. That was at the encouragement of some of my relatives there in Sweet Water,” Tucker said. “I left there and went to Southern Miss as a graduate assistant and then was the assistant volleyball coach at Southern Miss. I applied at Mississippi State for the head volleyball job even though I had only had four years experience.”

Much to his surprise, Tucker got the Mississippi State job, filling the role for the SEC program from 1986 to 1994.

“I ended up leaving there to go back to high school,” Tucker said. “At that time, Mississippi didn’t have any high school volleyball, so all my recruiting was done out of state, which made it pretty difficult, especially at the SEC level.”

College coaching brought a unique set of challenges for Tucker, but it also took him away from some of his favorite parts of the profession.

“I had been a head coach in college for eight years and really missed teaching the basics of the game. I returned to high school and ended up at UMS-Wright down in Mobile. I spent five years there coaching,” Tucker said. “My wife and I felt like we were in a ministry in teaching and coaching. We started feeling like God may be calling us into more of a full-time ministry and we moved to north Alabama and started working as house parents at John Croyle’s Big Oake Ranch. We took a six-year absence from teaching and coaching and had 20 boys live in our home with us during that time.”

Eventually, Tucker felt the pull to return to coaching.

“About 10 years ago, we left the ranch and I got back into coaching. I’ve had several stops since then,” Tucker said. “We spent about 14 years in northeast Alabama either at the ranch or in teaching and coaching. The last two years we left Saks and went to Baldwin County and we thought that might be my last stop. I’d always had fond memories of Sweet Water. I contacted the school and one thing led to another and they offered me a position.”

Tucker will teach sixth grade science at Sweet Water and serve as the head volleyball and assistant softball coach, where he should prove a tremendous asset after serving for 10 years as a head softball coach.

“I’ve had a lot of success. I’ve been very fortunate and have had a lot of good players play for me. Once I got back into high school several years ago, I didn’t ever really have the itch to go back to college,” Tucker said of his ever-deepening high school coaching career. “To see a girl serve overhand for the first time and have a big smile, that meant a whole lot more to me than recruiting a college player.”

In his career, Tucker has amassed 562 wins as a volleyball coach and led his 2012 Saks softball team to the 3A state championship.

And as he begins his tenure at Sweet Water, Tucker said the goals will be similarly high.

“Sweet Water has a tremendous tradition in football and baseball. They actually have been very good in volleyball but they have never really advanced very far in the playoffs. They do extremely well right there around Sweet Water, but they’ve never had the same success in girls sports as they have in boys sports,” Tucker said. “I wanted to set the goals for volleyball and softball the same as they had in football in baseball. Our goal now in volleyball will be to qualify for the state tournament. They haven’t been to the final eight in volleyball, but that will be my goal every year that I’m there. It is a program goal. I believe that you’ve got to set your goals high. If you’re playing at the high school level, your goal is to win the state championship, but to do that, you’ve got to get there.”