Marcia Pinder, the long-time Fort Lauderdale Dillard High School girls basketball coach is regarded as the all-time winningest basketball coach in Florida. Pinder had a 996-231 record during her 44 seasons at Dillard High School. During her career as head coach of Dillard High School, she guided the Lady Panthers to 10 state titles. The Panthers won state titles in 1980, 1982, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2019.

Pinder graduated from Bethune-Cookman College in 1974, where she ran track and was inducted into Bethune-Cookman’s Hall of Fame in 2016. Pinder began coaching the Dillard girls basketball team in 1976.  Pinder was a mentor, an advocate and a second mother to many of her players and taught generations of young women how to excel both on and off the court.

The Miami Herald honored Pinder with its lifetime achievement award at its 2013 Broward Athletics Award banquet.  Pinder was also inducted into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association (NHSACA) Hall of Fame in 2014 and was the first coach from the Broward County Athletic Association to be so honored. The legendary coach was named the Florida Dairy Farmers Girls Basketball Coach of the Year five times (2010-2013 and 2015) and she received the Morgan Wootten Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017. In 2018, she won the Gatorade Coaching Excellence Award.

Pinder sent many of her Dillard stars to Bethune-Cookman, including Erma Jones, the women’s basketball all-time scoring leader and Gwen Williams, the program’s all-time three-point shooting leader. In addition to her own players, Dillard played a hand in other South Florida players attending Bethune-Cookman, including all-time rebounding leader Rosina Pearson.

Pinder passed away on June 23, 2021, at the age of 70. Tributes to Pinder from South Florida and from those in the college women’s basketball community went to social media after the news of her death surfaced. They all shared a similar message: Coach Marcia Pinder was great as a basketball coach but an even better person.