Tom Dolan says because his hire of Jason Asbell as girls basketball coach at new Jamestown High in 1997 was his first as the Eagles’ athletic director, it made it “special.”
Jessica Canady called joining Asbell’s program at Jamestown and knowing he’d be her coach “the greatest moment of my life.” Those are sentiments that Poquoson athletic director Page (Turner) Yarbrough and younger sister Sydney Turner, the Islanders’ softball coach, share after playing in college for Asbell at Division II Davis & Elkins in West Virginia.
Asbell, most recently a women’s assistant basketball coach at Colgate, died Oct. 30 at 54 after battling cancer for about a year. Although he spent almost the past two decades as a college women’s basketball assistant or head coach, he is remembered in this area for a record of girls hoops success without parallel in the Bay Rivers District.
His teams went 192-51 in his nine seasons with Jamestown, winning 21 or more games in the final seven. The Eagles’ 57-41 win over Hidden Valley of Roanoke in the 2006 Group AA championship game is the only state title for a girls hoops team in the Bay Rivers era that began with the 1990-91 school year (Franklin, Poquoson and York won state titles prior to BRD membership).
“I remember being at the Siegel Center in VCU’s locker room before the state championship game and him giving us his vision,” said Canady, who went on to become a 1,000-point scorer for Old Dominion before playing professionally in Ukraine and Puerto Rico. “He told a story about how all he could see the night before was us celebrating at the end of the game.
“I said, ‘You know what? I think you’re right.’”
Canady says when she began at Jamestown, Asbell told her “I’m going to get you a state championship.” Her reply was, “And I’m going to get you one,” adding, “with my teammates, I did.”
The Bay Rivers’ greatest player-coach combo were a combined 102-11 over four seasons, but Dolan felt it was Asbell’s ability to include Canady’s teammates that fueled the run to the elusive state crown.
“That was a pretty magical season,” said Dolan, who retired two years ago after a long stint as associate executive director of the Virginia High School League. “At the end of the year, when a lot of people were concentrating on Jess, he got the other players to play at a level they didn’t know they could play at.”
They often played at a frenetic pace featuring pressure defenses. In short, a style that fit their intense, sometimes fiery, coach’s style.
“He could be tough on officials, so I’d have to occasionally talk to him about that kind of stuff,” Dolan recalled. “But you never had to worry about the practice part of dealing with the kids.
“He was really good at that, and his record speaks for itself.”
Asbell, who began his career in 1994 coaching the junior-varsity teams at Bruton (which played then in the fall) of the BRD and Lafayette of the Peninsula District, long aspired to be college coach. He left Jamestown after the 2006 season to become a collegiate assistant at D-II West Liberty before landing the head coaching position at its West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference rival D&E.
D&E’s 138 wins in his 12 seasons are its most as an NCAA program, and the 19-win season of 2016-17 tied for the second-most in program history. Sydney Turner, a Poquoson graduate who was one of numerous Bay Rivers players Asbell recruited over the years, was a 3-point shooting ace on that team.
“I wanted to play for him because of his fighting spirit,” she said. “I knew how much he wanted to win, but also how much he cared about me as a person.
“He had high standards and accountability, and I knew that bred success. I hope my players know how much I care for them the way Jason cared about me.”
Turner’s sister, Page Yarbrough, was Asbell’s second recruit — his first from the BRD — after he landed the D&E job.
“He was really good,” said Yarbrough, Poquoson’s girls basketball head coach for several years before becoming the school’s AD. “He was someone you respected because he worked hard the way you worked hard.
“He gave you the best of his best.”
Turner says that included Asbell’s fight with cancer that commenced soon after he moved to Colgate following a season as head coach at Bridgewater. His former players say Asbell influenced them beyond high school and will forever cherish their time with him.
“He prepared me 100% for college,” said Canady, who works in business with Capital One in Atlanta. “I felt ahead of the curve with some of the stuff I learned my freshman year (at ODU) because I’d learned it in high school two years earlier.
“I can honestly say those were the best years of my life.”
Asbell was honored on Nov. 8 in a memorial ceremony at Colgate University.
