MOULTRIE, Ga. – When the Colquitt County High School Class of 1981 holds its 40th reunion this month, among those attending will be a student who went on to be an outstanding collegiate athlete, a successful coach, an acclaimed educator and the subject of a documentary that will be shown here in her hometown.

Brelinda Copeland Sullen is still one of the most prolific scorers in Colquitt County girls basketball history.

She went to an All-American career at Tuskegee University, coached the Booker T. Washington Lady Eagles basketball team to a 148-32 record, returned to Colquitt County for several years as a guidance counselor and an assistant basketball coach and worked for a time in Worth County before returning to Alabama.

There she gained a reputation as a caring and dedicated principal who helped students at two high schools overcome the effects of poverty, crime, drug abuse and teen-age pregnancy.

And it is her story of confronting those problems head-on and successfully dealing with them that became the basis for “Love Goes Public,” a 65-minute documentary film produced by award-winning cinematographer Kevin Flannagan.

The Class of 1981 reunion will begin on Friday, September 24, with classmates meeting at Colquitt County’s 7:30 p.m. football game against Northside of Warner Robins on Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium.

Members of the class and their friends and family are invited to attend a showing of “Loves Goes Public” at 1 p.m. the following day at the Moultrie Cinema.

Sullen will be on hand to talk about the film.

Classmates later will meet at 5 p.m. at Sunset Country Club for dinner and dancing.

Sullen’s classmates will remember her as the 6-foot-1 post player from Doerun who helped lead the school’s girls basketball team to a 23-3 record in 1981.

Colquitt County head coach Julian Grantham and assistant Mattie Taylor guided the Region 1-AAAA Player of the Year to Tuskegee, where she was named All-Conference three years and All-America her final two seasons.

It was Mattie Taylor who provided much of the impetus to her becoming an athletic and administrative success. Taylor was instrumental in helping the talented youngster escape the poverty she grew up in as one of 19 children.

“My parents didn’t know anything but working,” Sullen said. “But Coach Taylor said, ‘You are going off to college.’ It’s hard to explain what she did for me, but I wanted to be a coach and a teacher, just like her.”

Sullen also remembers Grantham often picking her up at home in Doerun and taking her back home after practices, enabling her to continue her career.

“And he helped me develop my skills,” she said. “He really is a jewel … all the patience he had with me.”

The care and love Taylor and Grantham showed her form the basis of how she has handled her roles as an athlete and an educator.

“I do those same things here,” she said this week in a phone interview from her home in Auburn, Ala.

Turning down an opportunity to play professionally in Germany, Sullen remained in Tuskegee and received her master’s degree in counseling, serving as a dormitory counselor for a year before working as an elementary school teacher and as a guidance counselor.

She has two master’s degrees and received her specialist degree in counseling from Auburn.

Sullen also became the head girls basketball coach at Booker T. Washington and led the Lady Eagles to five area titles.

But in 1998, her mother became ill in Doerun and she returned to Colquitt County, where she was an assistant varsity girls basketball coach, head junior varsity coach and a guidance counselor.

It was a difficult decision leaving Booker T. Washington girls basketball program, which she had developed into one of the best in Alabama.

When she came to Moultrie, she brought with her a senior basketball player named Kim Bedgood.

“If I had not brought her, she wouldn’t have graduated,” she said.

Bedgood had a strong senior season at Colquitt County. Sullen said Bedgood’s son recently earned a baseball scholarship to Old Dominion.

Sullen credits Lady Packers head coach Joe Parker with helping her with her analytical approach to coaching.

She later went to Worth County as head coach where she took a team that folks referred to as “the bad news bears of basketball,” and led them to the Sweet 16 in her second season. 

Both her mother and Mattie Taylor died in 2002.

“They were the two most influential people in my life,” she said.

Two years later, Sullen returned to Alabama.

She first worked as a sixth-grade teacher and was an assistant basketball coach at Notasulga High School in Macon County, working with the post players, and soon became a guidance counselor at the school.

In 2008, she was named principal at Notasulga.

Sullen said 100 percent of the students at the school received free or reduced cost lunches.

“Everyone struggles there,” she said.

But she began changing the school’s culture. 

Students, which she refers to as “my babies,” and their parents had her cellphone number and she encouraged them to call her, even after school hours, if they needed assistance.

She greeted youngsters with a hug as they got off the school buses and soon knew every student by name.

She held an assembly every morning, helping the students, especially those whose home circumstances left much to be desired, to start the day with a smile and encouragement.

“I don’t allow them to wallow in whatever hardship they have,” she said.

She soon greatly reduced the 40-percent dropout rate and raised the 30-percent graduation rate. There were fewer fights in the halls and school yards.

And the number of teen pregnancies went to zero.

Sullen said that her upbringing in rural Colquitt County has enabled her to be empathic to many of the problems faced by her students.

She, too, had a baby while in high school and was so distraught, she took pills in an effort to kill herself.

After she recovered, she was able to raise her daughter with her family’s help while she went on to earn her degree.

Sullen, who lived next door to her church in Doerun as a child, counts heavily on her faith as she tackles in effects of poverty in education.

And she has a motto: “Love is as love does.” It is her belief that love must be tangible.

She has known to dip into her own pockets to help students or their families.

But Sullen will tell you she was not able to tackle the school’s problems alone.

Groups such as Campus Life and The Hudson Family Foundation, led by former Atlanta Braves pitcher Tim Hudson and his wife Kim, helped in numerous ways, especially helping secure clothing and shoes.

And she enlisted the help of people in the community in myriad ways.

In 2015, she was sent to Booker T. Washington High School, another low-income, at-risk high school of about 500 students, to take on similar problems there.

“The first day there was rough,” she remembered. “There were gangs. There were fights.”

She says she was able to curtail gang violence in the school “because I wasn’t afraid to die.”

Tall, imposing, frank and matter-of-fact, she stood up to the bullies.

“No child is going to run a school that I’m the principal of,” she said. “I went to the gang leaders and told them, ‘I love you, but you’ll have to conform.’”

She is a proponent of keeping students on campus as long as possible, encouraging them to belong to clubs and other extracurriculars.

“I’m my babies’ biggest cheerleader,” she said. “I just try to give them hope.”

But it is an endless struggle, she said.

“These kids have problems that won’t go away,” she said. “And even though we have limited resources, we still have to achieve our goals.”

She does believe that with her hands-on approach of love and discipline, she is making a difference.

“The kids have bought in,” she said. “I think we have made changes for the better.”

Sullen and her success at Notasulga caught the attention of filmmaker Kevin Flannagan, who over the course of several years, documented her interactions with students, educators and the community.

The result is “Loves Goes Public.”

After five years in production, the film was set for release last year, but restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic put those plans on hold. It was originally scheduled to be shown in Moultrie on March 7, 2020.

People in Colquitt County now will get to see the film tribute to one of its native daughters.

It is expected to be shown at the Moultrie Cinema beginning on September 25 and through the following week.

Sullen said she is looking forward to getting together with her former classmates, many of whom she has not seen in many years.

She and husband John Sullen have been married since 1990. 

Her daughter Nekesha Miller has her specialist degree and is working on her doctorate. John’s daughter Myra Crockett is a corrections officer. 

Their son John II was an offensive lineman blocking for Cam Newton on Auburn’s National Championship team in 2010. He has two degrees from Auburn and another from Oklahoma and is currently working at the SEC headquarters in Birmingham, Ala.

Sullen credits much of her success to her South Georgia upbringing.

“Everything I do was in me,” she said. “It all comes from Colquitt County. It’s what’s in my heart.”