Shortly after settling into his teen years, Van Chancellor found himself in the throes of making a decision that would ultimately carry him from small-town Central Mississippi existence onto the world stage at large.

"I was 16 years old and going to a little Lutheran church in Louisville, Mississippi, Rocky Hill Methodist Church. And I couldn't make up my mind whether I wanted to be a preacher or a coach," the conqueror of the WNBA, World Championships and Olympics says, that characteristic furrow squiggling across his brow.

"And my Sunday school teacher said, 'Van, I just think you can reach a whole lot more young people as a coach rather than the other way.' So I chose coaching over preaching. I've always wanted to be a coach since that day."

Truth be known, Chancellor actually had three career choices available to him: country preacher, basketball coach, or farmer following in the footsteps of his now-deceased father Winston Van Chancellor, Sr.

No doubt Chancellor many times over the five decades leading up to the early 2000s thanked that Sunday school teacher profusely in his prayers if not in deed. A graduate of the University of Mississippi with a degree in mathematics who spent 19 successful seasons as coach of the Rebels women's basketball team, Chancellor chartered a life's course that united the dirt paths and roadways of the community of his birth, tiny Nanih Waiya, Mississippi, with the busy streets of Beijing, China, Athens, Greece, and Springfield, Massachusetts.

There were, of course, a few chug holes along the way. But eager to accept a new, harder challenge and make the most of it each time, Chancellor far exceeded the expectations of the father who once said he didn't think his kid would ever amount to anything more than a worn-down, local yokel.

Chancellor, a former three-time WNBA Coach of the Year, has gone farther in the game of basketball than even he thought possible, relishing each and every moment. "I've worked all my life. I've had a job that I didn't think was a job. In other words, I never have thought I had a job. I just loved what I was doing," he says. "I made no money for a ton of years but I still loved it. I never did get up in the morning and say I was going to work."

Chancellor has coached on every level from junior high school through college and the pro ranks, but his early concentration was work with young boys and girls. During the first two years of his career, Chancellor struggled mightily, winning a total of only 22 games.

Not once, though, did his spirits sag or the belief and confidence that he could one day succeed dissipate. "Never did think that. My first two years, I coached in high school and we won eight games and 14 games. I wondered was I any good at this," Chancellor says. "But I just knew I loved it and I knew that I just wanted a shot. I finally got my first big break, went to a big high school, just (through) luck, at age 22. And that's what jump-started my whole career."

Word that a farmer has struck a gold mine, of sorts, turning out crops annually that billow his bank account to legendary proportions soon echoes far beyond earshot of his neighbors, though that farmer may never gain the reputation, accomplishments or fortunes approaching what is enjoyed by those who make the annual Forbes list.

Similarly, an outstanding athletic coach in rural America soon gains widespread attention, even if Hollywood never calls for a remake of "Hoosiers." So it was with Chancellor whose successes at Horn Lake High School and Harrison Central High School resulted in a summons from the athletic department at Ole Miss in the late-1970s.

Chancellor made the trek down to Oxford but says he entered the interview session thinking that after the formality, the lure to which he would succumb was a return to the simple life a few miles up the road. "I had said I wasn't going to interview. I didn't want to go into college coaching," Chancellor says. "I was coaching boy's basketball at that time. But they convinced me to come up there. I wasn't going to take the job."

Had the job of coaching the Old Miss men's basketball team been at stake, Chancellor would have jumped at the opportunity. But often a bonanza can blossom when one's mind is closed to its possibilities. "I couldn't get a college boys job. I did everything I could to get a college boys job, then I got the luckiest job of my life," Chancellor says. "I got to be a women's (college) basketball coach. And everything good happened to me from that moment on."

During 19 years as coach of women's basketball at Ole Miss, about the only thing that eluded Chancellor was winning an NCAA championship. He came close on three occasions but in each instance in the Final Four was turned away by either Western Kentucky, Auburn or in 1986 by Texas and coach Jody Conradt, another Hall of Fame denizen who guided the Longhorns to become the first undefeated team to claim an NCAA women's title.

Chancellor would love to have enjoyed a different outcome, and frequently in subsequent years discussed the disappointment of falling short of the goal. But it isn't something that left him feeling empty. "None of that ever bothered me, and I'll tell you why," he says.

"I always thought that as long as I was doing the best I could, I was working hard and doing all I could to give my team the best shot at winning, I wasn't one of those guys that that really bothered me. "That never stuck in my craw. Because realistically, I just could never as a college coach get away from playing Western Kentucky at Western Kentucky; Texas at Texas; and Auburn at Auburn.

"When I had those three teams, three really good teams, and I had just gotten beat - we got beat one year by three points, one year by one point - and all of them at the worst and hardest places to play, so, yeah. I would like to have gone on (to an NCAA championship). But that never stayed with me."

The Lady Hilltoppers represented a mountain he was unable to climb. The Lady Tigers were a thorn in his side and the Longhorns an impossible beast to tame. But what eventually drove Chancellor into the WNBA was a job that every college coach wrestles with once a year - recruiting.

"I loved Ole Miss, I loved Oxford, I loved everything about Ole Miss. But at that point in time in my career, I had just gotten completely tired of recruiting," he says.

Whenever Chancellor is close to a gambling casino, it's not beneath him to go over and give the one-armed bandits a few tugs, or lay down a few sheckles during a game of blackjack. Taking a chance on the WNBA could've been considered far riskier than either of those pastimes.

Never had a women's professional basketball league lasted very long in the United States. Naysayers felt the WNBA would suffer a similar fate. But Chancellor had reached a point where this roll of the dice was worth the risk.

"All my life, I wanted another challenge. I thought the WNBA was a challenge. That's what I wanted," Chancellor says. "My last four jobs, everybody told me not to take them. I went to Horn Lake, I went to Harrison Central High School, I went to Ole Miss, I went to the (WNBA) Comets. Everybody said those were four bad moves. Those were the four greatest moves I ever made."

Infrequently, Chancellor returns to Nanih Waiya "where there's no stop light," revisiting his spawning ground, retracing mentally the path down which life has carried him. "One of the last times I went home, my brother and I went over there to a little, bitty ol' 40-acre plot of ground that my daddy and I farmed in cotton," Chancellor says.

"It's just hard to believe you can go from the cotton fields of Central Mississippi to being the Olympic coach. That's why I just feel like God's really blessed me. I've been one of the most blessed people in America. I didn't dream of all this. Where I lived, you didn't know about that. You didn't dream of coaching the Olympics. You didn't dream of going to the Naismith Hall of Fame."

W.H. Stickney Jr., on April 30, 2007, retired from the Houston Chronicle after 35 years' service as beat writer for college women's basketball, the WNBA/Houston Comets and boxing, professional and amateur.