Steele Standing

United Faith girls basketball coach finds strength to cope with tragedy and new job — all at same time

By Aaron Garcia | South Charlotte Weekly

For the moment, all Renea Steele is doing is watching layup drills.

Well, that's probably not true. Just watching basketball is a bit of an impossibility for Steele, the way a movie director must get caught up in the mechanics of a film rather than being able to simply sit back and eat popcorn. So while Steele's United Faith Christian Academy girls basketball players practice layups, she's probably making a mental list of things that need to be corrected, wrinkles that need ironing.

Steele's elemental connection with the game isn't an uncommon trait among coaches, especially those who have worked up to a high school varsity job, like Steele, who's in the early months of her first gig. Neither is the fact that Steele has grown up with the game. She played for the Myers Park Mustangs in the early 1980s before matriculating to Foot Hill College (Los Altos, California), a junior college. She's been a coach since 2003, even as she worked in corporate Charlotte.

So in the gym, Steele's in her element.

For these few hours, nothing matters but the improvement of her Falcons, and that's a welcome change.

Painful call

Steele can't remember the date she was offered the head-coaching job at United Faith. Same with the day she officially signed her contract. Dates that were decades in the making have since fallen to footnote status — not because of a slide in importance but rather a slip in stature, especially in comparison to March of this year.

On March 21, Steele got a call at 1 a.m. telling her she needed to come home to Charlotte. Steele got lost on the return trip from Columbia, South Carolina, where her AAU team was playing. She turned around with panic and disbelief, her mind racing faster than she could push her car to go. Steele, desperate after no one else would break the news to her over the phone, had to trick her sister-in-law into telling her the last thing in the world that she wanted to hear.

Just hours before, Latia "Tia" Antoinette Winchester — Steele's daughter — died in a car accident.

The person who made the initial call was Steele's ex-husband, Steve.

While the two remained good friends after the divorce, Steele said the timing of the call concerned her. That, and she could tell something was wrong with Steve's voice. When he didn't answer direct questions about Tia, Steele didn't press, she just got in the car and did just what Steve said to do — she started heading home to Charlotte.

"That was the longest drive coming back because no one would tell me (what was going on)," she recalled.

Finally, her sister-in-law broke the news when Steele acted as though she'd already been told.

"It was like time stopped," Steele said of hearing the actual news.

Call it denial or simply disbelief, but the point didn't truly hit home until Steele saw all of her family's cars parked at her house when she pulled up.

Taken too soon

Many accidents seem to be products of some cruel cosmic lottery, which can help ease the pain. Sometimes, things just happen. Senseless, yes, but not having anyone to blame puts the accountability squarely on the notion that anything can happen at anytime. But this was not that type of accident.

Around 10 p.m. on March 20, Eddie Ellison was arrested in the death of Tia Winchester. Ellison was charged with murder, driving while impaired, reckless driving, speeding (90 miles per hour in a 35-mile-per-hour zone), fleeing/eluding arrest with motor vehicle, resisting a public officer, assault on a government official, carrying a concealed weapon, felony hit and run causing injury/death and failure to heed blue lights/siren.

According to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police report, Ellison was fleeing the N.C. Highway Patrol when his car slammed into Steele's daughter's at the intersection of Parkwood Avenue and North Davidson Street.

Her car careened into a nearby house, and 25-year-old Tia Winchester was pronounced dead at the scene.

"I was told that she was thrown from the car and died instantly," said Steele, her eyes beginning to tear. "That aspect gave me comfort to know that there wasn't any suffering and that it was instantaneous. My faith has me believe that she was gone before she ever hit the ground. I have to live with that, and that's the best thing I can live with."

With some work, Tia probably would've made a solid basketball player; she was fairly tall, and though she always shunned hoops for high style, she knew the game well, even keeping statistics for her mom's teams. But deep down, she aspired to be a model and could pick apart a fashion show or magazine ad the way her mother could a college basketball game. But like her mother, she also had a passion for working with youngsters and was a preschool teacher in Ballantyne. According to Steele, she had a creative flair for the job. Tia had a livelihood that was both pragmatic and pleasurable, and it was evident in her work.

The differences between Steele and her daughter didn't detract from their relationship. To the contrary, it probably made it stronger. Steele enjoyed standing in line with Tia for the auditions to the television show "America's Next Top Model" in uptown Charlotte in 2008. Tia even received an initial callback, and although the process stopped there, "She was just happy to get that," said Steele. "That's a great memory. It was a good day."

Nor did Steele complain about the countless hours the show graced their television when the two lived together, no more than anyone else would. It was good bonding, a way for a mom to share in her daughter's passion.

But most of all, Tia loved kids and was a natural teacher. She helped institute Saturday hours during the holidays so that the parents at Rainbow Station preschool could have time to go shopping. She started sports camps for the kids, she was always open to new ideas.

"She was always thinking of others. She was just that kind of person," said Steele.

Ground zero

Toward the end of the summer, Steele was offered the head coaching job at United Faith. Professionally, she was more than ready. In 2003, she was an assistant coach at Independence High under head coach Erica Turner. After that, she spent a year as head coach at Sugar Creek Charter School before serving as an assistant coach at Charlotte Country Day for six years. During the spring and summer, she coached AAU basketball. After her daughter died, Steele decided to resign from her position working with the City of Charlotte's utilities department and concentrate on coaching full time.

But there was doubt. United Faith was a team in flux after former coach Kristi Marsh resigned. Furthermore, the team graduated two seniors central to its 16-8 record the year before. To complicate matters, a school from a neighboring county also offered her a job at the same time. But when it really came down to it, United Faith was the best fit, period.

"I liked the school, and I liked the administration," explained Steele. "I said, 'You know what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.' It was an opportunity to build a program."

But it would have to be from scratch, as the Falcons only had about five girls willing to play.

"I said, 'Renea, you've always wanted to build a program,'" said Steele. "'All right, you're at ground zero, and you're really going to have to build this program.'"

But emotionally, taking the job would be a big step.

"There were times that I thought I was going to lose my mind, no doubt," said Steele. "The strength of my family and friends kept me on that focused road. There were times where I said, 'I don't want to do anything. I don't want to work, I don't want to eat, I don't want to sleep.' I just wanted to hibernate, so to speak.

"But there were encouragers who said, 'Now, would Tia want you doing this? She knows you miss her, and we know you miss her, but life has to go on, so do something that she would be proud of, do something that will help you keep her memory alive and something she'd love to do.' That's where all of this came from," said Steele. "That keeps me busy."

The next step

Now, only months removed from Tia's death, Steele is keeping herself busy, and the fact that she's coaching ensures that her daily escape is both healthy and productive. It helped her get through Thanksgiving without Tia, and hopefully will help with Christmas. It's probably too much to ask of basketball to take Steele's mind off Tia's birthday on Dec. 27 or Ellison's plea hearing in mid-January. But basketball will help, filling Steele's schedule with former players' college basketball games, her current AAU team's middle-school slate and, of course, a varsity season with her Falcons.

"Whatever gap in time that I have, one of those schedules is going to fill it for me," she said. "Being able to be there watching ball keeps me focused, and the next day I can get up and start it all over again.

"I've found that when I don't have anything to do, that's when I might hit a little depression or a serious missing-Tia moment, so I do try to keep going, and it does help," said Steele, who even admitted to sitting around watching the boys team practice rather than go home to an empty house.

"I don't want to go home and sit and have too much time there," she said.

To her players, Steele's coaching doesn't feel like an escape. Instead, when Steele's on the court, it's a return to normalcy. The players admire the way she encourages while coaching. They appreciate having a familiar face at the helm. They learned about Tia's death when it happened after their former coach, Marsh, sent an e-mail informing the players and their families. The constant struggle isn't lost on the girls.

"I respect her a lot as a person because of what she's been through and the way she carries herself and our whole team," said senior Savannah Grandy, who's sidelined until January with a leg injury.

"To be able to do that is hard, in general, but doing that with everything else she's been through has been amazing."

They've also admired that Steele has kept the bigger picture in focus. With only six players this season, double-digit wins might be hard to come by, but development won't be, said freshman Lacy Lockhart.

"She cares more about us getting better and doing what we have to do than getting a 'W' on the record," said Lockhart.

"I think she leaves it out the door, and when she comes in here, it's about us," said senior Gabby Catanzaro. "She's focused on what she has to do, and she'll make sure it gets done. That helps us out a lot, but I'm sure it's hard for her."

Added Grandy: "I'm not sure, but I feel like this is a place where she can come and kind of leave it at the door, just come in here and focus on us, focus on basketball, have something else to do if that's possible."

But again, Steele's Falcon team isn't just a distraction; it's her first varsity head coaching job, and she takes it as seriously as you'd expect. One day, she'd like to coach at the college level and has dreams of recruiting for a big college program, especially if it were the University of Tennessee, her favorite team. But first, she has plans of building a program and getting her players to improve.

"I'm not out here just to be here," she said. "Could I be doing other things? Sure. But I'm where I want to be, and I'm doing what I love doing."

And while she's doing it, that's all that matters.

— Published in South Charlotte Weekly, Dec. 10-16, 2010