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Trailblazing athletics director retires after nearly 40 years leading Sevier County sports

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Trailblazing athletics director retires after nearly 40 years leading Sevier County sports

Conchita Owenby started off as a trailblazer. She was among the first women to earn a full athletic scholarship at Carson-Newman University and hasn’t stopped since.

She went on to a career in sports and education, started the girls basketball program at Pigeon Forge High School and served as its first coach. She eventually became the first woman high school athletics director in Sevier County when Gatlinburg-Pittman hired her in 2017.

After nearly four decades with the Sevier County school system, Owenby is bidding goodbye to the court and her students.

In the late 1970s, she was recruited by legendary Lady Vols coach Pat Summitt to play at Tennessee, but Owenby thought that stage was just “too big” for her at the time.

“Girls basketball was really coming to the forefront at that time,” she said. “I wanted to go on and play, and I got an opportunity to go to Carson-Newman.”

She graduated and joined the Sevier County school system in 1985 to teach wellness and honors biology, and coached multiple sports. She started at Seymour Elementary School, where she taught physical education, and a year later moved to Sevier County High School, her alma mater.

In the 39 years since, she was named District 2AA Coach of the Year in 2003, inducted into the Sevier County High School Hall of Fame in 2004 and awarded the TSSAA AF Bridges District 1 Coach of the Year in 2005.

During her tenure, Sevier County has won 18 district championships, 11 regional championships and 15 state championships, including team and individual titles.

What she’s most proud of is the connections she made with her students and the opportunity to coach her two daughters.

“I was very proud to coach my girls,” Owenby said. “I got to coach both of them in high school, and that, of course, is a lifetime memory. But what I’m most proud of seeing how excited the athletes are when they come together and they have success in something. They see that they’re an important, big part of something.”

Both of her parents were good athletes, but it was her elementary school coach who inspired her to commit to a life in sports.

“I was just a little fourth grader sitting in the bleachers. My older sister had decided to try basketball, and (her coach) saw me sitting in the bleachers and pulled me out and said, ‘Do you play basketball?'” Owenby said. “And I said no. I was just in fourth grade. He said, ‘Well, you do now. Get out here.'”

There was no looking back.

At a Dec. 12 celebration of Owenby and her career, current and former students lined up to give her hugs and wish her a happy retirement. It made her reflect on the past and offer up some simple advice learned over decades of highs and lows.

“Don’t ever sell yourself short or give up on a dream,” she said.

She wishes her successor well and leaves big shoes to fill.

“Be the hardest working person in the school,” she said. “Go in with the attitude that there is no job that is beneath you and be willing to do anything to help, and that should be your main job: to help your coaches and help your athletes by being a servant.”

Areena Arora, data and investigative reporter for Knox News, can be reached by email at areena.arora@knoxnews.com. Follow her on X @AreenaArora and on Instagram @areena_news.

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