Hixson named new Holcomb hoops coach

HOLCOMB – Education and coaching veteran John Hixson will step up as the new head coach of the Holcomb High School boys basketball team this year.

Hixson, assistant coach of the Hornets for the past two years, will be taking over for Michael Snider, who is heading home to coach at his alma mater, Twin Rivers.

“Coach Snider did a great job and we got along really well,” Hixson said. “He did a great job of game preparation and taking care of the x’s and o’s. My style is more ‘teach kids how to play, don’t teach them plays.’ He’s going to be missed by the kids, and he was very successful here.”

Hixson has a long history of coaching, starting in 1995 when he coached junior varsity and varsity boys basketball, baseball and served as the Reindeer’s athletic director. For the last three years of his tenure, he was also the principal at Clarkton.

After leaving in 2001, he eventually went on to serve as a high school principal for 17 years at various schools in the region.

After officially getting out of the education game altogether, he was approached by Campbell schools to coach the Camels’ junior high boys basketball team. He felt the call to return, and spent another three years in that position while helping Laura Foster’s high school girls basketball team and his wife’s high school volleyball team.

“I said ‘no’ a couple of times when Campbell first approached me to coach, but now that I’ve been doing it again, it’s back in my blood,” Hixson said. “It keeps me young. It makes me older in some sense when we don’t play well, but I still get to interact with the kids and teach them the game that helped me out so much.”

Hixson is now employed by FCC Behavioral Health, where he serves as Coordinator of School Services. He oversees staff involved with a program which aids individual school districts in helping “children who have been diagnosed with mental and behavioral issues.”

He explained that he’s happy with the current stats quo, as FCC is “gracious enough” to allow him to coach on the side, and he collaborates with many area school administrators in his current position already.

“It solidifies that I’m just meant to help kids,” Hixson said. “My whole adult life, I’ve just helped kids. I don’t get much interaction with them at FCC because I’m mostly working with adults and supervising staff, but it’s all about the kids anyway.”

After coaching alongside Snider for the last two years and getting to know all of the younger players stepping up to high school this season while they were in junior high, he’s developed a rapport with each of them that will help smooth the transition.

“I felt like I’ve invested two years with these kids,” Hixson said. “I think I have something to offer for them, and I just like teaching the game of basketball. I know these guys real well after spending the last two seasons with them. I know their strengths and weaknesses, and that’s a learning curve that someone not being in the program would have to overcome.”

As a self-proclaimed “old school coach,” his style may vary somewhat from what his players may be accustomed to, but Hixson doesn’t plan on altering the positive path that has been built much.

“We have a lot of younger guys, several seniors, but a lot of guys who didn’t have the varsity experience,” Hixson explained. “There will be a transitional time for some of them. I’ve been telling them all summer that it will take time to adjust to some of the changes, and we’re not making many, but our big focus is to perfect the fundamentals and a lot of the small things.”

As Hixson steps up, he’ll be joined by new assistant coach Tyler Campbell, who is making the move from coaching junior high boys basketball and baseball at Senath-Hornersville.

He said that if the Hornets buy in, and if they can perfect the fundamentals of the game and do the small things right, he fully expects to be a very competitive team this season.

More than playing well on the court, Hixson wants his players to have fun during the process.

“I just want them, at the end of the year, to be able to say they enjoyed the season,” Hixson said. “I want them to say they enjoyed it, got better and learned some things. Not even just about basketball, because as a coach my job is to teach them how to be good young men as well.”