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Associate
Head Coach Betsy Harris

Betsy Harris enters her
seventh season as an assistant coach at UWA,
after serving one season under Head Coach
Becky Crowe in 2000-2001. Harris brings 10
years of quality coaching experience to West
Alabama, along with an outstanding
collegiate and professional playing career.
In her time at UWA, Harris
has been instrumental in the development of
West Alabama guards. They include former
player Michelle Sharpe who was
All-Conference in 2000-2001. Former player
Jessica Thompson (2004-2008) who is UWA’s
all-time 3-point field goal career leader
and ranks second in the NCAA D-II with
3-pointers made in a single game with 12.
Former players Veronica Lee (2002-2006) and
Ashton Washington (2004-2008) were
All-Conference for two years with Washington
being named the school’s first Gulf South
Conference Female Athlete of the Year.
Harris also recruited and signed former UWA
Freshman of the Year and All-Conference
player, Tausha Evans (2001-2002). All four
of these players have scored 1,000 points in
their career and are in the top five at UWA
in career points.
Harris spent the 2002-2003
season as an assistant coach at East Central
Community (Miss.) College, following a
one-year stint as an assistant at Troy
University
As a collegian, she was a
four-year starter in the University of
Alabama backcourt, and helped lead the
Crimson Tide to three consecutive NCAA
Tournament appearances and one Final Four.
She earned Second Team All-SEC, NCAA Midwest
Regional MVP and Final Four All-Tournament
honors as a senior in 1994 and holds the
record for most career 3-pointers made at
UA. Currently Harris ranks fourth in the
Southeastern Conference in career 3-point
field goals made and holds the record for
most 3-point field goals made in an SEC
Tournament with 13 in 1993. Harris also
ranks sixth in Alabama’s career points with
1,519 and tops in career three pointers with
272.
In her final three years at
Alabama the Crimson Tide finished ranked in
the Top 25 with a national ranking of fourth
her senior season. Harris was also invited
and participated in the USA Basketball
National Team Trials in 1993
After graduating from
Alabama with a B.S. in Sports Management,
Harris embarked on a four-year professional
basketball odyssey, complete with stops in
Spain, Iceland, Sweden, Greece, Switzerland
and WNBA training camp with the Detroit
Shock in 1998. Harris completed her M.A. in
Teaching at UWA in 2001.
Along the way, Harris
coached in various foreign locales,
basketball camps and spent one season
(1998-99) as a volunteer coach at Newton
County High School.
Prior to her collegiate
career, Harris prepped at Decatur High
School (MS) where she was All-State and her
team won the school’s first State
Championship her senior year. She also went
to state in track and tennis during her high
school days while also being selected as the
school’s Homecoming Queen in 1990.
She is the daughter of Pat
and Linda Harris of Decatur, MS. She has a
twin sister (Patsy) and an older sister
(Becky). Her brother, Jeff, is a Military
Police Colonel in the Army and has served a
year in Iraq. She has three nieces
(Courtney, Mary Jordan, and Bailey) and
three nephews (Reagan, Andy, and Dylan).
Harris’ Grandfather, James
Coburn Harris, is in the Mississippi State
University Athletic Hall of Fame, lettering
in basketball, baseball, and football. Her
parents have the "Dr. Pat and Linda Harris
Endowment Scholarship" in the Entomology
Department at Mississippi State University.
In her spare time, Harris
enjoys reading, country music, the outdoors,
college football, and spending time with her
family. She is single and resides in
Livingston with a Jack Russell/Rat Terrier
mix dog named Dakota and a cat she rescued
named Bo. She is a member of the Women’s
Basketball Coaches Association.
Graduate Assistant Coach
Emily
Mason
Emily
Mason begins her first season as a graduate
assistant on the bench at the University of
West Alabama.
Mason, a Rogersville,
Ala.-native, concluded her collegiate career
at Carson-Newman College in Johnson City,
Tenn. In two seasons at CNC, Mason shot
47.5-percent from the floor while averaging
11.3 points per game and pulled down 7.7
rebounds per outing. In her senior season
she finished fifth on the team in field goal
percentage with .469, second in points
(11.6) and rebounds (7.4). In her junior
season, recorded three double-doubles in an
injury shortened season. She averaged 10.8
points and 9.3 rebounds along with 2.4
assists and 2.4 steals. Mason shot
51-percent from the field and 33-percent
from behind the arc for Dean Walsh’s Lady
Eagle Basketball squad. While at CNC, she
was named to the Orthopedic Classic and
Catawba Classic Tournament Team in 2007 and
the Red Roof Class II Tournament Team in
2008 along with All-South Atlantic
Conference Team honors in 2008.
Prior to Carson-Newman,
Mason began her college career at Gadsden
State Community College in Gadsden, Ala.
playing for Kim and Charles Nails. At GSCC,
she helped lead the Lady Cardinals to the
Alabama Community College Conference
championship in 2005 and a ACCC runner-up
finish in 2006. Mason garnered 2006 ACCC
Player of the Year laurels and was a
National Junior College Athletic Association
All-American. She was named ACCC Tournament
MVP in 2005 and received All-Conference and
All-Region honors along with being named to
the ACCC All-Tournament team in her two
seasons at GSCC. She was also named as a
ACCC All-Star in 2006. Mason finished her
career at GSCC as the school’s all-time
leading rebounder and second all-time
leading scorer. She also holds the
single-game rebounding record along with
being the two-time leading scorer and
rebounder for the Lady Cards basketball
team. She finished her career with 34
double-doubles. Mason averaged 12.8 points,
9.8 rebounds, 1.4 assists and 1.2 steals per
game for the Lady Cardinals. She shot
57-percent from the floor in her career at
GSCC and 67.5 from the free-throw line.
She helped guide Gadsden
State to a 51-9 record in her two yeat stint
with the Lady Cardinals.
Mason received her Bachelor
of Science in Special Education Certified
K-12 from Carson-Newman. |