Ballard steps into head coach role for Lady Tigers

Carla Ballard, the new head coach for the Lady Tigers, speaks with Tuttle senior Kyndell Cummings before an Area game Thursday, March 6.

Carla Ballard has been named the new head coach of the Tuttle Lady Tigers basketball program after serving the past three seasons as an assistant coach.
“When the job was offered to me, I was humbled, honored,” Ballard said Monday. “I’ve really enjoyed working with the girls the last three years in the assistant coach’s role, and when this opportunity presented itself to continue working with them and try and just keep some continuity in our program, I couldn’t pass it up. We have great kids, we’ve got some good kids coming back, good kids moving up from the middle school, and I just expect to continue the tradition of what’s been done before us.
Ballard and her husband Brad moved to Tuttle 11 years ago, when Brad took on his first head coaching job. The Ballards were selective about where they planted roots, wanting the best for their two children.
“We were very particular when we were leaving Lincoln Christian about where we wanted to call home,” she said. “Tuttle was the one job that [Brad] wanted to go after. Dylan started here in 5th grade, and Kinsey started here in kindergarten. Of course, Dylan’s graduated and at OU and Kinsey’s finishing up her sophomore year.
“This is home to us. We love this town, we love our community. We’ve got a phenomenal school and administrators that support us, so that part of it was really easy.”
Looking ahead to the 2025 season, Ballard is optimistic about the roster’s experience and potential.
“We return three starters off of this last year’s 21-and-8 team,” Ballard said. “Marissa Sandlin will be a senior, kind of leading the way for us. We had some freshmen that started this past year and got valuable experience. Then, you throw in just a lot of kids that have gotten a little bit of time here and there, but they’ve been big JV players for us. We’ve got some sophomores-to-be juniors who are ready to step up and do their part. Our junior high coaches have done a great job—Lauren Jerome and Macy McAdoo—and we’ve got good kids coming up from our 8th grade to be 9th grade class. We’re excited about those kids too. I’m excited about continuing to work with Lauren and Macy as well.”

While Tuttle won’t be fielding a particularly tall team, Ballard believes in their toughness and versatility.
“We don’t have anybody in our program right now that’s a six-footer, but we’ve got some 5-9, 5-10 kids that are just hard workers, athletic—they can hold their own in the post position.”
“Any more, with the way that teams are running offenses and stuff now, it’s positionless. You get the rebound, you push the ball up the floor—it doesn’t matter if you’re the point guard or the forward. That makes it kind of fun, and different people get to handle the basketball and get different chances to post up and things like that. So it’s not just, ‘you’re a post, you’re a guard’ anymore.”
Ballard brings years of head coaching experience to the new role.
“Right out of college, I got my first head coaching job at Ketchum High School. Then we were at Miami, and I was the head coach there. Then our last stop before here was Lincoln Christian School, and I was the head coach there for eight years. So a total of 13 years I was the head girls basketball coach before we moved here.”

“When we moved to Tuttle, it was Brad’s first head football coaching job and there wasn’t a need or an opening for girls basketball. So I was happy to step away for a little bit and just be mom and take care of our kids. I was completely happy doing that. Then three years ago the opportunity to be an assistant coach came available and I took that—and here we are.
“I was perfectly content in that role. I still got to be the head coach of the JV and the 9th grade team, and that was fun—I loved coaching those guys. But the big thing is just being able to provide our girls some consistency. They don’t have to start completely over with an entire new coaching staff. They get to have a familiar face in me, moving into that head coach’s job, so that makes the transition for them a little easier.”
Ballard expects to maintain a similar system to what the team has been running.
“It will be a very defense-oriented team. We want to be a team that works extremely hard on the defensive end of the floor and uses our defense to create offense—easy offense for our team, transition buckets and stuff like that. We’re going to emphasize rebounding. Those are things that were always huge when I was a head coach before. If you can do those two things, you have a pretty good chance to be successful.”