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One of the most successful and longest tenured coaches in the Tri-parish area has officially coached the final game of his storied and championship-winning career.
Longtime Ellender girls’ basketball coach Kenneth Dixon announced his retirement this week, a decision that was confirmed to the Tri-Parish Times this weekend by Patriots’ Athletic Director and head football coach Terry Washington.
Dixon was one of the stalwarts in local coaching, unquestionably among the winningest coaches in the history of Tri-parish prep athletics.
The coach spent more than 20 seasons with the Lady Patriots’ program, starting his career with the team in the early 1990s.
During his tenure, the Lady Patriots won four state titles in seven total appearances to the Girls’ Top 28 Tournament (the Final Four in prep basketball).
For Dixon, retirement is a topic that the coach has pondered for several seasons now. The longtime Lady Patriots’ coach said during interviews during both the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons that he felt his time as a coach was nearing its end after close to 40 years in the field.
Dixon arrived at Ellender with more than 15 years of experience in coaching.
One of the reasons why the Lady Patriots’ coach opted not to retire following recent seasons was his roster.
During the past few seasons, Ellender fielded a talented group of underclassmen players who progressed each year to turn the Lady Patriots back into a Class 4A playoff contender after five-straight seasons losing in the first round of the Class 4A State Playoffs.
In Dixon’s final season, the once-inexperienced Lady Patriots in previous seasons were now senior-laden, and Ellender got that monkey off its backs and advanced to the State Quarterfinals with a 23-6 overall record.
The coach hinted in the middle of the 2013-14 season that he was sticking around to stay with the players that he’d blossomed since their freshman seasons.
“I’m going to see (the seniors) out the door and then think about whether or not I want to do this anymore myself,” Dixon said during an interview during the past season. “I’m not as young as I used to be. There’s a lot of work that goes into this. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but for the time being, it’s about these girls – especially those seniors. They’ve been loyal to me. I want to be loyal to them, and I want us to go out with a bang – as big of a bang as we can give ‘em.”
Ellender’s final run ended a few wins short of its ultimate goal, but Dixon and the Lady Patriots reached the apex of Class 4A several times during the coach’s tenure.
The Lady Patriots won their first state championship under Dixon in 1999 – the start of a dominant three-year run for the team.
Ellender went back-to-back and won it again in 2000 and finished one win short of a three-peat, finishing as the state runner-up in 2001 after a 56-44 defeat
After a one-year hiatus from prominence, Ellender returned to the winner’s circle in 2003, taking home the state championship in a 53-41 victory over Woodlawn.
After a break from their usual dominance, Ellender’s next wave of great players came in the late 2000s when the Lady Patriots won the 2007 Class 4A State Championship and finished as the runner-up in 2008.
The 2007 title came in Class 5A – a 37-32 victory over Southwood. The team returned to Class 4A the next season due to the LHSAA’s reclassification process. While there, they fell to a buzzer beater shot against St. Michaels in the state championship game, losing 51-49.
The loss in the 2008 finals set up a new era for the Lady Patriots who then broke in a slew of newer, younger players in future seasons, which started the team’s streak of consecutive first-round defeats.
But Ellender returned to the big stage in Dixon’s final season and made a deep playoff push, ending the coach’s career in a fitting way.
According to Washington, the search to find Dixon’s replacement is under way and applications will be collected throughout the coming weeks before the school formally makes a hire.
It is not clear whether Dixon will remain with the school as a teacher or if he is retiring from the public school system altogether.
