Roland native Clay Conley coaches Hammon team to a state championship

In just his sixth season as a coach, Clay Conley has a state title on his resume. The Roland native is the head girls basketball coach at Hammon, located in western Oklahoma north of Elk City.

Earlier this month, the Lady Warriors captured the Oklahoma Class B state championship with a 59-33 win against Arnett.

It was extra special for Conley and his Hammon team to win in the final year at Oklahoma City’s State Fair Arena, nicknamed the “Big House.” After 60 years of hosting championship basketball events, State Fair Arena closes its doors in a few weeks, and will be replaced by a new arena next door.

“Getting to go experience two state tournaments being a player at Roland with Coach (Eddie) Lewis, I didn’t know that anything could top that, and then getting a chance to come in this year and make it to the finals in the final year of the ‘Big House’ is something just incredibly special,” Conley said.

Conley’s Lady Warriors won the fourth gold ball in the history of the program in his second season as coach, capping a 26-5 campaign. He previously served as coach of Buffalo Valley’s boys and the boys and girls teams at Kinta before taking over at Hammon, which had won state the season before Conley’s arrival.

“People think I’m crazy when I say this, but I knew very little about Hammon girls coming into it,” Conley said. “Honest to God, I didn’t know that they had won state the year before because I was heavy on the boys side. Then I get here and come on my interview and they start talking about Henley West and all those other talented players we’ve got and it’s just been unbelievable being able to come here and kind of continue doing what they’ve been doing in the past.”

West, a 6-foot-5 senior, finished her Hammon career by scoring 45 points in the title game, setting a single-game state record in 5-on-5 basketball. The West Texas A&M signee averaged 32.3 points in the Lady Warriors’ three wins at state.

“Being 6-foot-5 in girls basketball, her ability, skill-wise, is kind of tough to guard, especially in Class B, but outside of a player, Henley is just an unbelievable human being,” Conley said. “If you had her on the phone right now, she would never mention one word about herself. She gives all the credit to her teammates.”

Conley, who graduated from Roland in 2015, gives a lot of credit to his coaching career to Lewis, who has been at Roland for more than 40 years and recently won for the 800th time in his career.

“Coach Lewis, to me, is always going to be the greatest high school basketball coach ever,” Conley said. “Just his impact on me as a player, and then you know, we’ve continued to speak since I’ve went on to college and then became a coach. … He’s made a tremendous impact on my life, and I’ll forever be grateful for that.”

After attending the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, where he played on the men’s basketball team, Conley had aspirations of coaching boys. But in his second year at Kinta, the girls coach left due to a family emergency, and Conley was thrust into double duty.

However, he began to enjoy coaching girls. In his last season at Kinta, the girls went from winning one game to improving at least 10 more wins.

“I think after that, that group is a big reason why I don’t know that I’ll ever coach boys again until maybe my son gets to high school,” said Conley, who has three children with his wife Brittany. “But he’s got a while, he’s only one (year old).

“Girls have just been fun to coach and I think I’ve been blessed with really good groups, but I don’t under appreciate the boys groups that I’ve had either; I’ve made some lifelong relationships with those guys and a lot of them I still talk to.”

So, can Hammon, and Conley, win another gold ball next season?

“We’re going to miss Henley and Justice (Espinosa), our two seniors, but we bring back six of our top eight, we’ll be a lot different,” he said. We’ll be a lot more average size-wise, but we’ve still got a lot of talent in those six, and then we’ll get four freshmen and we’ll see how fast they’ll develop and if they can impact the game. … I still think we’ll be pretty good and have a chance to get back.”