Longtime Pass Christian girls basketball coach set to retire

PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. (WLOX) - Longtime Pass Christian girls basketball coach Greta Ainsworth will be retiring at the end of the 2022-23 school year.

Ainsworth has spent nearly 30 years teaching and coaching basketball on the Coast. Throughout her 14 years at Pass, she led the Lady Pirates to deep runs in the playoffs over several years as well as back-to-back final four appearances.

The Lady Pirates coach is stepping away to spend more time with her oldest daughter, Breanna Ainsworth Halley, who is battling metastatic breast cancer for the fourth time.

”My time here has been very special,” she said. “I graduated from Hancock. I coached there for fourteen years, and I never thought that I’d be able to go anywhere else that felt like home, but coming to Pass Christian was just like a second home.”

When asked about what she will miss most about coaching, Ainsworth took a second to look at her players surrounding her.

“The love of the game is what I’m going to miss but more than that it’s the kids and the relationships with the kids. I feel like they’re my own and I tell them all the time they are.”

Ainsworth and her daughter will continue to be in the stands at every game possible.

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