I just finished reading a book titled “BILLY.” It is a story about Kentucky’s All-Time winningest high school basketball coach with over 1,000 wins, Billy Hicks, written by a friend, Dr. John Wiley Bryson.
Hicks became the head coach at Corbin High School in 1987 and in his eight years at the helm, his teams won 212 games. They dominated the 50th district with six straight district titles and they did something that had not been accomplished at Corbin High School in 39 years. That is, they won the 13th Region tournament and advanced to the state tournament.
As the author of the book pointed out, everybody liked Coach Hicks. I interviewed him many times, and I don’t ever remember him approaching me without a smile on his face. It was always a joy to hear him talk, at times with that little stutter, and what the author of the book called some of his favorite phrases, like “dad-burn,” in referring to a situation.
Until I read this book, I was not aware that I had broadcast games that Billy had played in and coached in while in high school at Harlan as a player, and Evarts as a coach.
We had one thing in common, that is, we were tired of seeing Bobby Keith and the Clay County Tigers continually represent the 13th Region in the state tournament. Keith’s teams had won the 13th Region tournament 18 times in his 29 years of coaching there.
Back then, I broadcast every game of the 13th Region and state tournament. Also on my broadcast were radio stations in Pineville and Manchester. My voice became familiar to Clay County fans. It was my practice to interview the coaches of both teams before the game and the winning coach after the game. Therefore, I interviewed Bobby Keith many times. I made many friends associated with the team.
But as Billy said, we were both tired of Clay County winning the regional title almost every year. So, in 1991, Corbin finally broke the spell of watching others make the traditional trip to Rupp Arena when Hicks’ Corbin Redhounds beat Bell County at Bell County for the region title. The night before, they had eliminated Clay County.
In addition to radio broadcasting, my friend Dale Johnson and I started a little business of our own by videotaping each game that Corbin football and basketball teams played in and showed them on the local cable on Sunday nights. Out of the many videotapes that we did, I gave all but two to the Corbin coaching staffs. The only two I now possess are the wins over Clay County and Bell County in those regional tournament games.
Over the years, I have watched the playback of those games and, quite frankly, I am embarrassed by my over-enthusiasm with the play-by-play. I didn’t act like a broadcaster, rather, I was more like a cheerleader. But those two wins in that tournament stand out as two of the best moments of my play-by-play broadcasting career.
For Redhound fans, I encourage you to read the book. It is available on Amazon under the title “Billy” at a cost of $9.95. I learned a lot about Coach Hicks in this book. All I had ever heard when he came to Corbin was that he was from Evarts.
From the book, I learned that he grew up in Ages, Ky., a little community in Harlan County. I did not know that he had spent time working in the mines and his coaching career spanned over colleges and high schools.
But the one thing I did know very quickly was that he was a tremendous basketball coach and led Corbin to several 30 -in seasons. After he left Corbin, he spent 25 years as the head coach of the Scott County Cardinals. At Scott County, his teams had 701 wins against only 145 losses for an 83 percent winning percentage.
His teams won 18 district titles and 10 regional titles. The Cardinals were in nine final fours with five runner-up and two state titles. His 33 state tournament wins is a state record. Coach Hicks was inducted into the 2020 class of the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Coach Hicks passed away on Sunday, December 3, 2023, at the age of 71.
The author of the book quoted Coach Hicks as saying, “Leavng Corbin was tough. I loved Corbin and still do, so much that I did not trust myself to step down and move on if there was not already an assigned contract, (talking about a contract with Scott Co.) a done deal, I would have been talked out of it.”
Coach Billy Hicks was a magnificent man, as well as a great basketball coach.
