By Chuck Reherman
Sports Editor
Following in her father’s footsteps.
When Southwest Covenant’s girls basketball head coaching job became available, Becky Mitchell didn’t hestitate to step up and replace her father, Terry Fellenstein in the position.
And now, Mitchell will “pull double duty” taking over the head volleyball coaching role as well after Samantha Lindsey stepped down recently to pursue other options.
Fellenstein after a long and storied career, retired at the end of the 2020-21 school season. He spent five years as the Lady Patriots’ head coach, while also handling the defensive coordinator role.
Mitchell makes the move up from the junior high, where she coached the girls basketball and helped out with the volleyball program. She also spent the last two years as an assistant on the high school team.
“He had been talking about retiring for a while and decided this would be the right time,” Mitchell said. “He’s a legendary state winning coach, pretty awesome.
“For sure I have some big shoes to fill,” she said. “He has done a good job of building the program up. This year will be a rebuilding year, we lost four starting seniors, but we have a starter coming back that will be a senior and we have a hole slew of ninth and 10th graders that will be coming in to play.”
Mitchell has been a successful coach in her own right and also has collegiate coaching to her credit. She coached volleyball for eight years and basketball for six years at Southwestern Christian University in Bethany before stepping away from coaching.
Her father talked her into coming to Covenant to help out with the junior high program.
“It was kind of a weird thing, I had stepped out of coaching for a little while and my dad said I should go to Covenant and coach the junior high program,” Mitchell said. “I thought that would be fun since my kids were junior high age and I could also help the program along.
“It was the idea that when I was brought on I would eventually take over the high school program,” she added. “I bascially am transferring up with the eighth grade into high school. And, I have helped coach the high school for some years and he gave me a system that he had me teach the junior high kids, so we did work together in that area.”
Mitchell is looking forward to the challenge of coaching both sports.
“It is going to be a rebuilding year, but it is going to be really great, we have the potential to do some great things,” she said. “We have done some things that will have them more prepared for the season.”
She just recently added the volleyball job after Lindsey stepped down.
“It was very helpful to have Becky in place and we felt like she was more than qualified to take over that position as well,” Athletic Director Kevin Cobbs said.
