Royce Chadwick, head Women's Basketball coach at Texas A&M Corpus Christi (Photo Courtesy: 2016-2017 TAMUCC Media Guide)
CORPUS CHRISTI – Floydada native Royce Chadwick has made a name for himself in women’s
collegiate basketball coaching; exceeding the 700-career win mark this season to become the all-time winningest basketball coach in the Southland Conference (SLC) history.
The SLC is an NCAA Division 1 referred to as a mid-major. The SLC’s membership is made up of
colleges in Texas and Louisiana including A&M-Corpus Christi, McNeese State, Southeastern Louisiana, Northwestern State-Louisiana, Houston Baptist, Incarnate Word, New Orleans and Nicholls State.
In the past two decades there have been numerous colleges make moves multiple times to different
conferences. Some of the colleges that have come through the SLC have been Louisiana Tech, Abilene
Christian, North Texas, Sam Houston State, UT Arlington, Oral Roberts, and Stephen F Austin.
Chadwick previously coached women’s basketball at both Stephen F Austin and Sam Houston State while
they were members of the SLC. In his 38-years of coaching collegiate basketball (29 in Division 1) he has won an impressive 78-percent of his games as head coach.
Chadwick graduated from Floydada High School in 1976. He said that he was a typical small town athlete that played multiple sports like football, basketball and tennis. He got his college degree in accounting from Southwestern Oklahoma State in 1980, and then a master degree in business education two years later.
Chadwick’s apparent passion was in basketball. While Royce was growing up in the 1960s, his father Kelly Chadwick started the girls’ program at Floydada High School. Stories have been told that Kelly put basketball goals up all over Floydada attempting to build interest in the roundball game.
Kelly was known on a national sports scene of being a driver of Don Hardy funny cars on the drag racing circuit, and had the nickname “Professor Chadwick” since he was an educator.
The Chadwick family has made its mark in Floydada. Royce’s mother Jackie, taught in the
Floydada schools for four decades; his sister Denise has been the local pharmacist at
Payne Family Pharmacy and an avid community supporter since the late 1990s; nephew Justin Payne
and niece Jenna Payne were successful high school athletes. Justin advanced to the Region I golf
tournament in golf a couple of seasons. Jenna went to state in both track and country country three
consecutive years, won a silver medal at state in tennis doubles with Jay Castenada in doubles, and was a fierce playing guard on the 2002 Lady Winds basketball team that advanced to the Region 1
tournament. Royce’s brother-in-law Stan Payne, lets just say is a local authority on hardly anything but will still comment on everything with his infamous Quitaque sense-of-humor.
Chadwick’s first coaching job was for Amarillo College as an assistant. “Despite helping
with both the men’s and women’s basketball programs I nearly starved to death, so I pursued the head job at Olton High School. They added a ‘zero’ to my salary, and I was able to eat again.”
Chadwick hit the ground running in 1983 at Olton where he led the Mustangs to a 21-5 record and
their first district championship in nine years. His first college job was at Oklahoma Panhandle State in Goodwell, where he coach the Aggies to pair of successful seasons of 19 and 20 wins respectively. Chadwick then coached five years at Howard Junior College in Big Spring, Texas for five seasons. He won four Western JUCO Conference titles and advanced to the NJCAA Tournament twice and was named the National Coach of the Year in 1992.
The success at Howard College propelled him into the Division 1 ranks. At Sam Houston State in Huntsville he guided the Bearcats to the school’s first ever winning season. SHSU was a member of the Southland Conference. He moved to another SLC school, Stephen F Austin in Nacogdoches, where he took the Lady Jacks to seven NCAA Tourneys. His most notable season was when SFA played in the Sweet 16 in 1996.
Next stop was in Huntington, West Virginia coaching the Marshall Thundering Herd to seven winning seasons in the Mid-American Conference. Chadwick’s teams set attendance records of leading the Mid-
American Conference for four consecutive seasons highlighted by 7,017 fans attending a game when Kentucky from the S-E-C visited Huntington. Chadwick in 2022 completed his 10th year coaching the A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders. The Islanders were a perfect 14-0 at home this past season after going 13-1 in 2021. A&M-Corpus Christi has the nation’s sixth longest winning streak going into the next campaign beginning in November.
MORE: Floydada native earns 700th collegiate win
“My coaching career has been very rewarding, not just in the wins, but to see these young ladies
turn into productive citizens with successful lives of their own. Coaching in the Southland Conference has been fun since very seldom is their a perennial favorite. I still like coaching in practices and watching the players in the games. The collegiate game has changed more in the last two years than the previous 20-years combined due to transfer portal,” coach Chadwick expressed.
Royce Chadwick has no immediate plans of hanging up his whistle, but rather keep chasing for the
perfect season in the Southland Conference where he has amassed an all-time 211-conference victories.
Information in this story was provided with a personal interview with Chadwick, and the A&M-
Corpus Christi website of Islander’s basketball.
