Almost from the time she could walk, E.J. Creel has been around the game of basketball. She knows the sport, played it well and coaches it well.

That hardly means it’s easy, though.

“I have a mental breakdown every December for about two days, then I’m fine,” she says with a soft chuckle.

Creel’s taxing schedule has a lot to do with it. During basketball season, coaching Porters Chapel Academy’s girls and boys’ varsity teams are her third and fourth jobs, along with being a wife and mother of three young children and her main occupation as a dental assistant.

Creel always seems to power through the stressful times, however, and is reaping the benefits on the basketball court. She led Porters Chapel’s boys to a 26-5 record this season and its second consecutive appearance in the MAIS Class A Tournament.

The Eagles won the District 5-A and Class A South Central tournament titles and had three players selected to the Class A all-star team. It’s a major transformation for a program that went 12-10 in Creel’s first season in 2007-08 and it has made her the 2012 Vicksburg Post Coach of the Year.

“She put us where we were at,” junior point guard Peter Harris said. “She takes us through what we need to do and not need to do. I love her with all my heart. I’ll never let her down.”

Creel is the first person to win both the Post’s basketball player and coach of the year awards. She earned player of the year honors in 2000 and 2001 during a stellar career at PCA in which she scored 3,222 points.

That accomplishment is enshrined in PCA’s gym, on a plaque under her retired No. 4 jersey. Until this season, Creel said she tried to hide her past as a player.

“I had them take that down,” she said. “It’s really nice for me for these kids not to know my background. They can build a relationship with me based on what we do out here, not what I did before. I’ve been out here long enough now that most of them probably don’t even know.”

Occasionally, however, Creel’s basketball skills come out. She’ll sometimes scrimmage with the boys’ team or walk through drills with them, and parts of her game remain sharp nearly a decade after her playing career ended.

“She can still shoot,” junior forward Ted Brisco said.

Creel laughed and joked that’s about all she can still do.

“They won’t let me dribble in there. I won’t. They won’t let me attempt that. They’ll come after me,” she said.

Creel’s hand in the team’s fortunes, then, is limited to what she’s done as a coach. Last season’s Eagles reached the Class A semifinals and this year’s squad built on that success. It went undefeated in district play and won the South Central Tournament, both firsts for the boys’ program.

For all that success, however, the season had a bittersweet ending. PCA was upset by Claiborne Academy in the second round of the Class A Tournament, 62-60.

“I was proud of the way we got better at the end,” Creel said. “There was a patch of about 10 games where it was hard to tell if we were progressing. It was fun to see how we were adjusting from that funk to tournament play.”

Creel will have a bit of a rebuilding job to keep the Eagles playing at a high level next season. Her three all-star seniors — Kawayne Gaston, Alton Burden and Talbot Buys — are leaving.

Three key underclassmen — Harris, Ted Brisco and P.J. Lassiter — do return, but were half of the regular six-man rotation this season. Despite a potentially thin roster, Creel said the experience gained the last two seasons will pay dividends.