(Editor’s note – Since Bob Tompkins was named the Louisiana Sports Writers Association’s Columnist of the Year Sunday, here’s one of his award-winning columns from 2024 to enjoy.)
There were a couple of things you noticed almost immediately about Alan Tinsley when he was coaching basketball, regardless of which team he was coaching, which included seven high schools and one college.
He was a like a steam engine at full throttle the entire game.
And, like a steam engine, he’d whistle – quick, shrill, tongue-curling bursts – the entire game.
A few days after a recent coaching retirement party in his honor, Tinsley said at the hobby and collectibles shop he owns on MacArthur Drive that his high-energy persona wasn’t put on just for show time. It’s part of who he is, who he has been and likely will be to the grave.
“When I wake up, I want to be challenged,” he said as cars splashed in the rain outside his store, which was closed on this day. “I approach each day asking myself, ‘How can I be the best I can be?’”
The 58-year-old son of Samuel and Lillian Tinsley came by that attitude naturally, you might say. His father was a preacher, and both of his grandfathers were preachers. Alan’s father’s name is Samuel, his first name is Samuel and his first-born son of four children is Samuel. The Tinsleys are born and bred to preach and work and help and inspire others and be thankful to their Maker in everything. In Alan’s case, that’s after thanking his wife, Carrie, for all that she does to make his life what it is.
He coached for 37 years, and it was a profession he started dreaming about at a young age and pursued beyond his basketball playing career in high school (Jena, under coach Ted McKee) and college (Illinois’ Greenville University, under Jack “Rip” Tragger). He even doubled his competitive sports load as a college senior with duty as the starting goalie on the soccer team.
He started coaching at Buckeye High School right out of college and was so impressive, Louisiana College’s head basketball coach, Gene Rushing, eventually came calling, wanting him to be his assistant coach.
“I didn’t go to LC with the desire to succeed Gene as head coach there,” he said. “I went there because I wanted to be mentored by the best coach in the state.” He did that for seven years, with a highlight being the time he had to take over as interim head coach for an ailing Rushing for one game in early March of 2000.
It was a first-round game of the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference men’s tournament, and Rushing couldn’t be there because he was in an Alexandria hospital with diverticulitis. Ever the one who could come up with a dramatic pep talk, Tinsley summoned his troops to “do something spectacular” not only for themselves, their families and the school but for their missing head coach. Against a talented William Carey team that would go on to win the tournament, the Wildcats rallied from a 42-28 deficit to take a stunning 68-67 lead, only to get beat by a buzzer-beating layup, 69-68.
Tinsley went on to coach at Marksville, Tioga, Avoyelles, Alexandria Senior High, Grant, Oak Hill and Northwood before calling it quits in coaching after this past season, his second season at Northwood. His longest stint was at ASH, where he coached from 2009-19 and achieved a school record 203 victories. At Northwood, he guided the Gators to the Division IV select boys state championship two seasons ago, and he claimed his 500th career coaching victory there last season.
Through it all, he was known as “The Whistling Coach,” and once even tactfully defied an official who asked him to stop whistling in a noisy, packed gym.
“I remember it was at a playoff game in Baton Rouge and during a stoppage of play,” Tinsley began. “The ref came over to me and said, ‘Coach, you need to stop whistling. It’s against the rules.’ I told him that’s not going to happen, that’s who I am, and that’s our means of communication. The rule says you can’t have an artificial noisemaker, but there’s nothing artificial about my whistling. But I told him, with a wink, ‘I’ll try and bring it down a little.’ He walked off and stopped and turned around and said, ‘I appreciate that, and I think you got me on that one, Coach.’”
And to think the whistling for Alan started one day when he was 8 or 9, sitting on a tree stump in his back yard, dejected that he couldn’t whistle. “I sort of sighed — and I have this gap between my front teeth — and out came a whistle!” He tried it a few more times, getting louder each time.
And he has never brought it down a little.