AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – As the graduates from Cross Creek High School file in to take their seats, joy in the James Brown Arena is palpable.

Everywhere you look, there’s a loved one celebrating.

Quanda Ball should be one of them.

The 43-year-old’s body was found in a car at Pendleton King Park Tuesday. Investigators are calling her death “suspicious.”

“She would have been clapping and yelling and screaming,” said Krystle Johnson. “She would have been really proud.”

Ball never had any children of her own, but it’s fair to say, she still had a lot of kids.

Krystle Johnson met Ball through a mutual friend when they were looking for a coach for the Lady Grinders, a local girls travel basketball team. She says Ball instantly became family to the girls on the team.

“She was that Auntie that they needed,” Johnson laughed.

Just ask Michaela Bogans.

She started playing for “Coach Q” in the 6th grade.

“I know she’s smiling right now,” Bogans said.

Bogans will be playing at the next level next year; she signed to play Division I basketball at Morgan State and leaves for Baltimore in July.

Bogans helped lead Cross Creek to four region titles and the Lady Razorbacks’ first-ever state championship.

“Coach Q, she means a lot to me. She was amazing. She told me I could do anything that I put my mind to,” Bogans said. “She was an inspiration to me. I looked up to her.”

Ball was quite the baller herself, playing D I ball for William and Mary.

Before that, she helped lead Curtis Baptist to the 1996 GISA state championship. The following year, she played for Richmond Academy and helped her team win the 1997 GHSA AAA High School State Championship. They were the first-ever team from Augusta to win a state championship in Class AAA.

“She was a really good person,” said Tiara Turner, a 2024 grad from Cross Creek. “A nice person. A good coach – a GREAT coach.”

Turner has been playing for Coach Q since middle school. Cross Creek teammate and fellow 2024 graduate Alaya Henry says she learned a lot about life from Coach Q.

“I had a game where I walked out of the gym, and she followed me out there and told me to tighten up – do it for the team,” said Henry. “Can’t just think about yourself no more.”

On this day of celebration, the Cross Creek graduates are thinking about others; they’re reflecting on how they each got to this point. For the young ladies Coach Q mentored, that means celebrating Coach Q’s impact, too.

“There’s a song that we would sing in church called ‘May The Work That I’ve Done Speak For Me,” Johnson said. “And I hope the work that Quanda has done in our community – especially with our girls – continues to live on.”

As an AAU coach, she wasn’t just a mentor for girls at Cross Creek; she coached girls in schools all across Richmond County.

When she wasn’t on the court, Ball also worked as a nurse, dedicating her life to caring for others.

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