Florida A&M coach Charlie Ward is guided by NBA and collegiate history, family roots

For years, Charlie Ward knew coaching at Florida A&M would be the only college basketball job he would consider.

A former NBA player, Ward has deeply rooted connections to the historically Black college in Tallahassee, Florida. His parents met on campus as undergrads in the 1950s. His older sister is also an alum, and Ward was born at the campus hospital.

So when athletic director Angela Suggs called him in April to say he was the top candidate to fill the head coaching vacancy in FAMU’s men’s basketball program, the opportunity aligned with everything Ward needed to make the jump from coaching high school basketball. If he accepted, he wouldn’t have to relocate his family from Tallahassee, where he had coached the Florida High boys’ basketball team since 2018. And his wife, Tonja, supported the transition.

“The reason why I chose to take the job [is] it’s a great opportunity for me to continue to develop and grow in the sport of coaching and basketball,” said Ward, 55. “But this for me [also] was just a chance to continue to help build the legacy that my parents started and my sister started at FAMU.”

Though Florida A&M didn’t recruit him as a high school athlete, Ward had a successful dual-sport career at Florida State. He won the 1993 Heisman Trophy as a quarterback in football and was the starting point guard on the men’s basketball team. Ward helped the Seminoles reach the NCAA tournament three consecutive seasons and became Florida State’s all-time leader in steals before ultimately pursuing basketball professionally.

The New York Knicks selected Ward 26th overall in the 1994 NBA draft, and he had an 11-year NBA career, primarily playing for the Knicks as well as short stints with the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs.

Ward’s former New York Knicks teammate Allan Houston described Ward as a fierce competitor and calming presence, praising his relentless work ethic in practice, his toughness and the physicality Ward brought to basketball from his football background.

“He also had the instincts to kind of see things, see plays ahead that were really good for us, especially in New York,” Houston, an executive with the Knicks, told Andscape. “When you make a championship run, you got to have some stability, and not only stability on the court but stability in a locker room. … It wasn’t just his work ethic on the court, it was everything that he did and represented. He really commanded a lot of respect.”

Houston is confident the qualities Ward demonstrated as a player will translate well for him as a Division I head coach.

“He learned from Jeff Van Gundy, Steve Clifford, all these NBA coaches he was next to. Now he’s got the chance to implement some of those things in his own way,” Houston said. “When you have that lens you can’t really turn it off – you have it. So I think his perspective is going to be the most valuable thing.”

Once Ward retired from playing in 2005, he became an assistant coach for the Rockets. He also worked as an assistant basketball coach at Westbury Christian School in Houston. Most recently, Ward spent nearly a decade as the head boys’ basketball coach at Florida High.

He knows his tenure as FAMU’s head basketball coach will be shaped by his experiences in the NBA, his time at Florida State and his upbringing on Florida A&M’s campus. Ward said he aims to share his journey with his players, using those experiences to instill valuable lessons and challenge them to grow — both on and off the court.

“I told them, ‘Don’t look at me as a celebrity. Look at me as a father figure or uncle,’ so that they can come to me at any time,” Ward said. “I just want them to be open and honest about what they can do with us.”

Since joining the Southwestern Athletic Conference in 2021, Florida A&M has a 30-42 conference record. Ward wants to build on the success of last season’s team under Patrick Crarey, who left FAMU to accept the head coaching job at Grambling State. The Rattlers finished last season with a 14-17 record, and were 10-8 in regular-season conference play. It was their first winning record in conference play and first SWAC tournament appearance since the 2021-22 season.

Florida A&M’s leading scorers last season — SWAC Offensive Player of the Year Sterling Young and Milton Matthews III — transferred in the offseason. Young is at Indiana State; Matthews chose East Tennessee State.

With five players returning from last year’s team, Ward’s recruiting philosophy to fill out the roster was to find players who embodied his mindset of excelling within their role, similar to what he did with the Knicks.

“Whatever role is defined for you, be willing to accept the role. That’s one of the things that I was blessed to be able to do – and have extended my career – because I just knew my role, and I excelled in that role,” Ward said. “So that is something that we’re looking for as well because when you excel in your role, great things happen for you.”

He went into the transfer portal and used coaching connections to find players who could contribute to the university and local communities, athletic players with high basketball IQs and a willingness to sacrifice personal agendas for the betterment of the team.

Ward brought in several transfers, including Buffalo’s Anquan Boldin Jr., son of Florida State alum and NFL veteran Anquan Boldin, and junior college transfers Jordan Chatman, Devere Palmer Jr. and Kaleb Washington.

Despite knowing Ward since he was a child, for the younger Boldin, his head coach’s NBA experience and the Rattlers’ fast-paced offensive style of basketball felt like a natural fit. Since joining the program, Boldin has worked with Ward and the coaching staff to elevate his game as a guard and build team chemistry.

“We want to build a basketball program [and] to be an esteemed program,” Boldin said. “Then we were looking, to be honest, to dominate the conference. We obviously want to win it. … In the beginning of the season, we want to just shock people and knock some teams off in the non-conference schedule.”

Ward acknowledged the changes in college basketball’s landscape, saying his goal is to support players beyond pay-for-play.

“We’re looking to do things a little bit creative throughout because we understand and know where we are from a financial standpoint,” Ward said. “But we’ve had people reach out and want to be involved and get involved. That’s what we’re looking into right now, so we can give them [players] those opportunities to be able to use their name, image, likeness to be able to support their family, support themselves.”

Florida A&M has a recognizable brand when it comes to recruiting premier talent to Tallahassee, Ward said. His selling point to most recruits is the development they would have under his coaching staff, which includes experienced former Florida State assistants Jarrod Lazarus, Rob Lewis and Sebastian Aguilar, who are helping Ward navigate collegiate basketball.

Since his hiring, Ward has been adamant about rebuilding the bonds between Florida State and Florida A&M. He has scheduled a preseason exhibition against his alma mater on Sunday, the first time in more than three decades the two men’s basketball programs will play in a game. In 1991, when Ward was a sophomore on Florida State’s team, tensions boiled over during a matchup between the crosstown rivals, resulting in an on-court fight between players.

Before tipoff on Sunday, Florida State will retire Ward’s No. 12 basketball jersey, the program announced Tuesday, making him the first student-athlete in Florida State history to have his number retired in both football and basketball.

“I’ve seen and heard a great response from people that are excited about seeing the game happen,” Ward said. “It’s just good for us to be able to make this happen, and hopefully we can continue to make this a part of the exhibition season or regular season moving forward, because it just brings great camaraderie within the city.”

Ward said tough competitive practices leading up to the start of the basketball season have set the tone for the team. He recalls that while he was at Florida State, the “iron sharpens iron” approach helped him and his teammates reach the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 in 1992 and the Elite Eight in 1993.

“Practices were always better and harder than the games,” Ward said. “It also prepared us for when we were playing top teams. So that’s very similar to where we are today. … Not sure how many games we’ll win, but we will show up each and every game to compete.”

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