Antonia Bennett to be inducted into the Florida A&M Basketball Hall of Fame

It took some experienced coaches, invaluable lessons learned, and productive basketball play at Florida A&M to help Antonia Bennett become the coach she is today at Lake Gibson High School.

Now Bennett, the eighth-year Lake Gibson girls’ basketball coach, will be rewarded for her stellar career when she is inducted into the Florida A&M Basketball Hall of Fame on Sept. 9-10 in Tallahassee.

“It feels great," Bennett said. "Blood, sweat and tears, the late nights in the gym putting up shots, working on my craft ... it’s a dream come true. I learned a lot of stuff at Florida A&M, but it started at Lake Gibson.”

Before scoring 1,641 points and pulling down 920 rebounds at Florida A&M, winning the Rookie of Year award her freshman year, earning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Player of the Year and first-team all-conference honors her junior and senior years, Bennett was leading the Braves to two district championships.

She earned All-County team nods for three years and says she attributes her success to Lake Gibson coaches David Lope, Victor Smith, Marquis Roberts, Terry Laster and Becki Kowalick.

“A lot of the things that I took with me at Florida A&M, I learned about myself in high school," she said. "Definitely want to thank my coaches and my college coaches as well. They just took the torch, gave me the platform and I was able to do what I do.”

Lessons learned at Lake Gibson

Following a junior season in which Bennett did not play because of a slipped capital femoral epiphysis in her hip that required an operation, Bennett led her team to a 26-4 record and a district championship over longtime-rival Winter Haven in 2008.

“I definitely couldn’t have done without my girls, my coaches, my teammates, “ Bennett said.

And those lessons learned at Lake Gibson carried with her to Florida A&M.

“Coach Marquis would always tell us just make up for it on defense, or play like you would play if you were losing," Bennett said. "(That always) stuck with me when I was at Florida A&M.

“If things weren’t going my way, just thinking on those little things like that. You make a mistake on offense, then hey, just make up for it on defense. Like I said, if we’re not winning — fight like you’re losing. Those were some things that stuck with me from high school.”

Making an impact at Florida A&M

Bennett certainly fought like she was losing in a MEAC game vs. North Carolina Central game in her senior year in 2012.

Near the end of the game, Florida A&M's Tameka McKelton blocked a shot before passing the ball to Bennett, who dribbled down the court and shot a 3-point shot. She missed it, but she rebounded her own shot before laying the ball in as time expired for a 63-62 win.

Bennett finished the game with 31 points, 15 rebounds, six blocks and four steals.

“Like I said, miss it, keep playing, don’t give up," she said. "If we would have gave up, we probably wouldn’t have won that game.”

The Bartow native also used fundamentals learned at Lake Gibson, but at Florida A&M, the coaches also impacted Bennett. They included: Latasha Shipman-Ganus, Stephen Joyner, Freddie Murray, Euneshia Proctor, Andrea Johnson and LeDawn Gibson, who recruited Bennett. Gibson, the Florida A&M Coach of the Year in 2012, is an all-time Winter Haven coach and is the current athletic director of the school.

“All of them had an influence on me,” Bennett said.

That helped her average 18.1 points, 9.5 rebounds her senior season as she led Florida A&M to a 14-2 conference record and a 21-7 overall mark (co-regular season runner-up) — the program's first 20-win season since the 1996-97 season. She finished the year second in the conference in scoring, rebounding, and blocked shots and was 14th in the nation with 14 double-doubles.

The impact of her former coaches has also helped with her coaching development at Lake Gibson. Since becoming the Lake Gibson girls coach in 2014, Bennett has won more than 100 games, three district championships and reached the regional semifinals this past year, the furthest the program has ever advanced in the playoffs.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Antonia Bennett to be inducted into the Florida A&M Basketball Hall of Fame