Once a Lion now she’s with ‘enemy’

Soon after helping lead Vanguard University to an NAIA Division I national championship in women’s basketball last season, Melissa Cook collected her degree and, like her fellow classmates, braced for life in the real world.

Instead, Cook finds herself in a situation nothing less than surreal.

“It’s like an out-of-body experience,” is the way she described what some would call working with the enemy.

Cook is a graduate assistant coach for the women’s basketball program at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. It’s a program with which she grew familiar due to its perennial rivalry with Vanguard, which ventured to Jackson six times during her career to compete in four NAIA tournaments and two regular-season tournaments hosted by Union.

The situation gets even more bizarre Saturday, when Cook and Union (9-0), ranked No. 1 in NAIA Division I, visit No. 2-ranked Vanguard (4-0) in a nonconference game at 7:30 p.m.

“I’m so excited to come home and see people, but that game is going to be very, very weird,” said Cook, who scored the winning basket in a 74-72 NAIA Tournament semifinal upset of then-unbeaten Union last season on her way to earning second-team All-American honors. “I joked with [Union Coach Mark Campbell], asking if I could just sit in the stands. It’s just a tug on my emotions. I spent four years playing at Vanguard [twice suffering serious knee injuries that sidelined her for the NAIA Tournament] and there are seven players this year who were my teammates last season. I talk to all of them every once in a while and Boomer [first-year Vanguard assistant Brian Roberts, who graduated last spring after playing four seasons with the men’s basketball program] is a really good friend of mine.

“But it will be OK. The game is only for a couple of hours and then I can be friends with them again. But I have to have the mind-set that I’m at Union now.”

That realization is one that still surprises Cook, she said.

“I wake up every day and, literally say to myself ‘I’m in Jackson, Tenn. I can’t believe it,’ ” said Cook, who averaged 15.7 points, 7.7 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.7 steals as a Vanguard senior, capping a career in which the 6-foot standout played every position on the floor at various times. “But it has been really fun. Coach Campbell is a great guy and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him and his team. But it has been crazy for me.”

And, Cook said, basketball is only a portion of her vastly different experience in Jackson.

“There have been a lot of adjustments,” she said. “Going from playing to not playing; being away from family and friends; and I’ve never lived outside of California.

“I think Coach Campbell enjoys me being here, but I think I sometimes drive him crazy. There are some moments when I’m just overwhelmed by being so far out of my comfort zone.”

Taking classes in pursuit of a master’s degree, initially part of the allure of taking the job, has been scrapped in order to concentrate on the rest of her everyday challenges.

“Classes were too much to take on,” she said.

Coaching is one of those challenges, though she said she is handling more behind-the-scenes duties than working with players. Cook, who charts every possession during games, said she is still evaluating whether coaching is in her future.

“I’m not sure I’m wired for it,” she said.

Cook said she still speaks regularly with Vanguard Coach Russ Davis, one of several who encouraged her to take the graduate assistant job.

The Union team arrived in Southern California Thursday [the Bulldogs play at The Master’s tonight] and Cook said she was looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with her family. She is already looking forward to a return visit for Christmas.

In the meantime, she’ll return to Tennessee and continue her eventful, though strange, season.

“I know [Union] is where God wants me to be,” she said. “I do miss home and I don’t know what next year will bring. But I’m here and I’m taking it one day at a time.”