Marshall County High School announced today the hiring of Martin Clapp as the new girl’s head basketball coach. Clapp, a 1981 graduate of Marshall County High School, has quite the resume’ since attending college at Williams Baptist College in Arkansas before graduating from Murray State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Physical Education.
Coach Clapp has nearly 30 years experience coaching women’s basketball at the collegiate level, beginning as an assistant coach at Arkansas College in 1983 for three seasons and University of Arkansas Little Rock as an assistant for two seasons. In 1998, Coach Clapp came to Murray State as an assistant coach for one season before heading to the University of Louisville where he was an assistant coach for eight seasons and heavily involved in recruiting, scheduling, scouting and on-court practice.
In April of 1997, Coach Clapp was promoted to Head Coach of the University of Louisville where he had six very successful seasons with a record of 108-73 and guided his team to the NCAA Tournament three of those six years. In 2001 his team won the Conference USA regular season and he was named Conference USA Coach of the Year.
In 2003, he became the Head Coach of the Birmingham Power Professional Basketball Team where he worked with players on the skills needed to advance to the WNBA. In 2006, he became the assistant coach at the University of Indiana and was in charge of the post player development and coordinated summer camps.
He went to Purdue University in 2007 as an assistant coach and spent five season there, helping to guide the program to three Big 10 Championships and two Elite 8 appearances in the NCAA Tournament. Coach Clapp has spent time as a talent evaluator for Blue Star Scouting Service, traveling the country ranking prospective college basketball players.
“It’s good to be back home”, Clapp said, “It’s wonderful. It’s really hard to describe. I’ve wanted to come back to this area. I still wanted to coach but I just haven’t had the opportunity until Mr. Lovett called me last week and it was kind of hard for me to hold it together.”
Over the last few years, Coach Clapp has worked with a scouting service throughout the country and has help to run a tournament in Mexico and has been an on site coordinator for the WNIT. Coach Clapp said the Marshall County job is the only one he would take saying, “it was perfect timing.”
Coach Clapp is married to Cindy and was joined at the announcement by his mother Glenda and daughter Amber.
