Coaching Staff

John Davis | Head Coach
John Davis enters his tenth season as the head women's basketball coach at Southern Wesleyan University (SWU) in 2019-2020.  The Warriors earned consecutive berths to the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) National Tournament in 2014 and 2015, along with back-to-back NCCAA South Region Championships under Coach Davis during that same time.  He also helped lead the Warriors transition from a NAIA program to NCAA Division II and Conference Carolinas and has won 10 or more games in 5 of his 9 seasons on the sideline.  Coach Davis is the longest tenured women’s basketball coach in the history at Southern Wesleyan.

"We want to work to help grow Southern Wesleyan into the premiere university of NCAA Division II athletics by being Christ-centered first and foremost,” stated Davis.  “We will continue to grow and develop our students by being a university and women's basketball program that will strive to put our faith into action on-and-off the court.  We want to give our student-athletes a platform to serve and love people through what we do in sports, while making it a priority to put these two principles into action."

Coach Davis has been fortunate to coach 5 NCCAA All-Americans, 17 NCCAA South Region honorees, 3 Southern States Athletic Conference (SSAC) All-Conference members, 3 SSAC All-Division members, 2 SSAC All-Freshman Team members and the 2016-2017 Conference Carolinas Defensive Player of the Year in Tatiana Manuel.  Manuel was the NCAA Division II leader in total blocks (114) and blocks per game (4.38).

The women’s basketball program has had a team GPA over a 3.0 the last six years, with the team placing 9, 5, 6 and 5 on the Conference Carolinas Presidential Honor Roll from 2015-2019.  Under Coach Davis’s guidance, the team has taken two service trips to Harlan County, Kentucky in 2014 and 2017.

Davis came to Central via Wesley College (NCAA Division III) where he spent six years as an assistant with the men’s program, and his last two with the women’s basketball team.  Davis began his coaching career in 2001 at the high school ranks as the head varsity boy’s coach at The King’s Academy in Jonesboro, IN. He finished his undergraduate degree from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2002, and graduated with his M.B.A. from Wesley College in 2005.  A 1997 graduate of Caesar Rodney High School in Camden, DE, Coach Davis has also been an adjunct professor at Southern Wesleyan for eight years.

Davis is married to the former Brooke Burton and they have two children, a daughter named Blake and a son, John (JD).  He also serves as a deacon at Hopewell Baptist Church in Seneca, SC.