Ashley Bush - Frederick Basketball

Ashley Bush, who coached the Frederick High School girls basketball team to the MPSSAA Class 3A state championship this season, is the County Sports Zone/Buffalo Wild Wings Coach of the Month for March!

Coach Bush is a 2001 graduate of Frederick. She's been involved in coaching girls basketball at the school for eight years, the past two of which have been spent as the varsity head coach. After a strong first season in which the Cadets won the MPSSAA Class 3A West Region title, the team improved in its second season under Coach Bush, finishing 26-2.

"Before the season we had a goal to win the division, to win the CMC championship, to win the region and to win the state championship. This was the first year that we did all four," Coach Bush said.

Coach Bush played collegiately at Seton Hall for four years. After Seton Hall, she played professionally in Puerto Rico for four years, and then one season in Luxembourg.

Seeing how basketball shaped her life inspired her to want to get into coaching.

"Basketball got my college education paid for. I traveled to Puerto Rico and Luxembourg to play as well. Even doing AAU growing up, I got to go travel all over the country," Coach Bush said. "I have a passion for wanting other young ladies to experience what I did."

To her players, Coach Bush is a role model.

"Coach Bush is a great leader and we look up to her as more than a coach. We look up to her as a powerful woman, and she's a really big influence in our lives away from basketball as well," junior forward Savannah Rininger said.

To Coach Bush, the reason this year's group was able to win a state title was their decision to not just dream about it, but fully commit themselves to it. The Cadets were an accountable bunch that was able to battle through tough practices in order to improve.

All that hard work paid off when Frederick topped Atholton High School, 72-60, to win the state championship in front of a raucous crowd at Towson University. Afterward, the entire community embraced its new state champions.

"After the game, the police and fire department took us through downtown. It was really late, it wasn't until after midnight that we got back," junior forward Imane Washington said. "There were lots of parents at the parking lot when we got back and it was a big party."

As exciting as an experience as it was, Coach Bush and her team still feel the same after winning a state title.

"It's great and I try to do my best as a coach to allow them to enjoy the moment because it's something a lot of people strive for but don't reach," Coach Bush said. "I've done my best to get them to enjoy the moment, but I think they've done that and now we all want to focus on doing it again."

For being named County Sports Zone/Buffalo Wild Wings Coach of the Month, Coach Bush received a gift certificate, a box of sauces and a hat from Buffalo Wild Wings, as well as a County Sports Zone Under Armour t-shirt.

If you'd like to make a nomination for next month's County Sports Zone/Buffalo Wild Wings Coach of The Month, click here.

Congratulations to Coach Bush!