Summer has officially arrived.

No group was happier to see the end of spring than the residents of the Oklahoma City area. That region was hit by major tornadoes this spring that took lives and did tens of millions of dollars in damage.

Among those who lost homes was a former Arkansan named Bennie Fuller.

Those of us who grew up in Arkansas and are of a certain age need no introduction to Fuller.

He was, quite simply, one of the greatest high school basketball players in Arkansas history. The fact he’s deaf just makes the story more intriguing.

Back in January, the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock named its basketball court for Fuller, who was in attendance at the ceremony along with his wife, Emma. Also there was Little Rock’s Emogene Nutt. Her late husband, Houston Nutt Sr., was Fuller’s coach.

Emogene was the mother hen who treated all of the athletes as if they were her sons. She, of course, has four sons — Houston, Dickey, Danny and Dennis — who went on to careers as college football and basketball coaches.

Emogene Nutt refers to Fuller as the “Wilt Chamberlain of the deaf.”

She devoted more than three decades of her life to the school and considers Fuller a “once-in-a-lifetime athlete.”

Houston Sr., who died in 2005, no doubt would have agreed.

An account has been set up at First Security Bank to help the Fuller family. Checks can be made out to the Bennie Fuller Donation Fund and left at any First Security location across the state.

Fuller is the all-time leading scorer in Arkansas boys high school basketball history and still ranks fourth on the national list. He scored 4,896 points at the School for the Deaf from 1968-71.

All of those ahead of him are from Louisiana. Greg Procell of Noble Ebarb scored 6,702 points from 1967-70, Bruce Williams of Florien scored 5,367 points from 1977-80 and Jackie Moreland of Minden scored 5,030 points from 1953-56.

Procell, who is Choctaw-Apache, played at what later became a designated Indian school on the banks of Toledo Bend Reservoir about 70 miles south of Shreveport. There were no limits on the number of games that could be played in that era, and Ebarb played 68 games during Procell’s senior season.

In Arkansas, no one comes close to Fuller for career points. Jim Bryan of Valley Springs is second with 2,792 points from 1955-58, and Allan Pruett of Rector is third with 2,018 points from 1963-66.

Fuller is third nationally on the per-game scoring average list (50.9 points per game during the 1970-71 season) behind Bobby Joe Douglas of Louisiana (who averaged 54 points per game at Marion High School in 1979-80) and Ervin Stepp of Kentucky (who averaged 53.7 points per game at Phelps High School in 1979-80).

In 1971, Fuller scored 102 points in a game against Leola that was played at Arkadelphia.

“I didn’t know I had 22 points in the first quarter and 44 points at halftime,” Fuller said in an interview several years ago through a sign language interpreter. “I wasn’t counting. We were just playing. At the end, I had no idea I had scored 38 points in the fourth quarter. It was like a machine gun, one after another. It was just nuts.

“I had some big nights before. If I had to guess that night, I would have thought around 70. But they showed me the scorebook. It was incredible.”

This was, mind you, long before the three-point shot. Here’s how it broke down that night in Arkadelphia in each of the eight-minute quarters:

— First quarter: Nine field goals and four of five from the free-throw line for 22 points.

— Second quarter: Seven field goals and eight of 11 from the free-throw line for 22 points.

— Third quarter: 10 field goals for 20 points.

— Fourth quarter: 15 field goals and eight of eight from the free-throw line for 38 points.

Fuller had grown up near Hensley, where he learned to shoot a basketball into a hoop made from a bicycle wheel. By his senior season in high school, college coaches were filling the stands at the School for the Deaf to watch the Class B team play.

After campus visits to Arkansas, UTEP and Memphis, Fuller chose to attend Pensacola Junior College in the Florida Panhandle.

Bob Heist explained that choice in a story for the Pensacola News Journal: “Jim Atkinson, an assistant on the coaching staff at the time, accepted the head job at PJC on an interim basis when Paul Norvell unexpectedly left during the spring recruiting period. The Pirates’ program wasn’t competitive … so the new coach returned to some old roots for talent.

“A native of Fordyce, Atkinson shared the same hometown as the state’s first family of the deaf — the Nutts. All the children were born with either serious hearing or speech impediments, including Houston Nutt Sr., the only person to play for basketball coaching greats Adolph Rupp at Kentucky and Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State).

“Nutt, whose speech was impaired from birth, was the coach and athletic director at the Arkansas School for the Deaf. His brother, Clyde, was a sensational athlete who led the 1957 U.S. deaf basketball team to the world championship in Milan, Italy. Clyde’s son, Donnie, was full hearing and an accomplished player at a Little Rock public school, and he understood sign language.

“Why did Fuller choose PJC? The school offered a vocational trade course in technical typesetting he was interested in, plus Atkinson offered a scholarship to Donnie Nutt. No other school could accommodate Fuller with a personal interpreter.”

Atkinson told Heist: “I had heard of Bennie and what he had done like everyone else, plus I knew Houston was the head coach and athletic director. To be honest, I was trying to find someone to tie our next season to, that one player who would make it interesting for fans. To me, that had to be Bennie. Then I learned about Donnie. I didn’t know how to do sign language, and he was also a very good player. I had a spot, so we kind of got two birds with one stone.”

Fuller averaged more than 30 points per game and Donnie Nutt averaged more than 20 points per game in 1971-72 even though PJC only went 7-18. Atkinson was replaced at the end of the season by a junior college coach from Missouri named Rich Daly, who brought in a number of highly touted recruits. Fuller and Nutt found their roles reduced as the Pirates went 26-4. Daly would later go on to serve as a longtime assistant for Norm Stewart at the University of Missouri.

Fuller received an associate’s degree after two years. He moved to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff but was only a role player for the Golden Lions. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from UAPB, he taught at the School for the Deaf for a time before beginning a long career in Oklahoma with the U.S. Postal Service. He and his wife’s four children all could hear.

Fuller’s 102 points on Jan. 19, 1971, against Leola are the most points ever scored by a deaf high school player in a certified varsity game. Fuller is also believed to be the first deaf player to receive a college basketball scholarship at a hearing institution.

“In the world of the deaf, Bennie Fuller’s name resonates like a midnight lightning strike,” Heist wrote. “He’s the legend for the hearing- and speech-impaired.”

Or as Emogene Nutt puts it, there was no one like Bennie Fuller in the deaf community before and has been no one like him since.

Now, Arkansans are being called on to lend a hand to this native son.

This is the eighth in a series of profiles of the 2013 inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame:

Raised in rural Crittenden County near the community of Edmondson, Sonja Tate learned to compete athletically at an early age.

“I had eight brothers and two sisters,” she says. “Everyone was very active. I played outside a lot when I was young with my brothers and my cousins. I always wanted to be a part of their basketball games. They made it clear to me that they didn’t want a girl out there with them. I wouldn’t back down, though. I wanted to play with them, and I knew I had to get stronger and tougher in order to do that. I had to develop my skills.”

Tate developed those skills to the point that she became perhaps the best basketball player to ever wear an Arkansas State University uniform.

Tate, who played at ASU from 1989-93, remains the career scoring leader at the school with 2,312 points. She returned to Jonesboro prior to the current season to serve as an assistant coach on the ASU women’s basketball staff.

In addition to being the school’s career scoring leader, Tate holds the single-season scoring record with 820 points during the 1992-93 season. She has the top five single-game scoring performances at ASU. She also remains the only ASU women’s player to have scored 40 or more points in a game, a feat she accomplished five times.

Now, she’s an inductee into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Tate played junior high basketball at West Memphis and then really began to blossom once she reached high school.

“I wasn’t a starter at the first of my 10th-grade year, but I was starting by later in the season,” she says. “I had a brother who broke a leg playing football and a sister who broke a leg in the long jump in track. I was determined to prove myself quickly since I had seen how other people had their playing careers shortened by injuries.

“There were great high school teams in the state at that time. We had our ups and downs, but I was able to play against some of the most talented players in Arkansas. That made me better.

“I’ll admit that I was not the best student coming out of high school. Basketball was my main subject back then. I was struggling to improve my ACT score. I talked to Coach Joe Foley about playing at Arkansas Tech and was also being recruited by the University of Missouri at Kansas City. I thought I was going to sign with Tech, but I ended up at ASU. I didn’t sign until the summer after I graduated.”

Basketball fans across northeast Arkansas were glad she made that decision. Tate earned a starting position during her freshman season. Following that season, she was named the Co-Newcomer of the Year in the American South Conference. She earned All-American South Conference honors as a sophomore and All-Sun Belt Conference honors as a junior and senior.

Prior to her senior season, Tate was named a preseason first-team All-American by Dick Vitale’s Basketball Magazine. Following her senior season, she was named to the Kodak All-America team and was honored as the Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year.

In addition to being the leading scorer in Arkansas State history, Tate:

— Owns the top five single-game scoring performances, including a 50-point outing against Louisiana-Lafayette during the 1992-93 season

— Connected on 95 three-pointers during the 1992-93 season, an ASU record that still stands

— Holds the single-season rebounding record with 327

— Is third on the all time rebounding list with 1,006

— Is the school’s career steals leader with 402

— Owns ASU’s top two single-season steal records with 125 during the 1992-93 season and 114 during the 1991-92 season

— Is the only player in ASU history to have a quadruple double after finishing with 29 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals in an 86-59 victory at Mississippi Valley State University on Jan. 27, 1993

— Won most valuable player honors in the 1993 Women’s National Invitation Tournament at Amarillo, Texas, after leading ASU to a 67-54 victory over SMU in the finals

Tate’s first contact with Arkansas State as a high school student had been with the track program rather than the basketball program.

She says modestly: “I did pretty much everything in track.”

Indeed, she was a track All-American and remains in the top 10 in ASU history in six events. She set the school record in the heptathlon in 1994 with 5,247 points.

After finishing her college basketball career in the spring of 1993, Tate went to Europe to play basketball and didn’t like it. She returned to Jonesboro to finish her course work toward a bachelor’s degree while competing in track, in which she still had eligibility remaining.

In 1996, the NBA Board of Governors approved the creation of the WNBA. The new league was announced at a news conference on April 24, 1996. At about the same time, another women’s professional league known as the American Basketball League was formed. The surge in interest in women’s basketball had followed the gold medal performance of the U.S. women’s team at the 1996 Olympics.

The ABL lasted just more than two seasons. On Dec. 22, 1998, the ABL declared bankruptcy and suspended its operations. At the start, however, the ABL had been considered a better league and generally paid better salaries than the WNBA.

“I went to try out for the ABL at Atlanta,” Tate says. “The tryouts were held on the Emory campus, and it was a huge event. I was broke at the time, and I had to collect donations to even afford the trip to Atlanta.”

The visit paid off. About a week later, Tate learned that she had been selected to play for the Columbus Quest in Columbus, Ohio.

“We only had six players at the start, so you got a great deal of playing time,” Tate says. “It was a good league for the players, and I was with it until it folded.”

The Quest won the ABL’s Eastern Conference during both the 1996-97 and 1997-98 seasons. Columbus went on to beat Richmond for the title the first year and defeated Long Beach for the title the second season. Columbus was leading the conference again with an 11-3 record in late 1998 when the league folded.

“After the ABL ended, there was a disbursement draft for the WNBA that followed a camp I attended in Chicago,” Tate says.

Tate was a three-year starter for the Minnesota Lynx. She led the team in minutes played, assists and steals. She also was among the top three rebounders on the team. After leaving the Lynx, Tate went to Europe and played professionally in France, Russia and Spain. She retired at the end of the 2004 season and returned to Jonesboro.

Tate earned her master’s of education degree from ASU in 2005. She was inducted into the ASU Hall of Honor in 2004.

After obtaining her master’s degree, Tate decided she wanted to coach. A friend talked her into moving to North Carolina, where she coached on the high school level at two schools. Most recently, she was the girls’ coach at William A. Hough High School in Charlotte, leading the team to a two-year record of 37-19 and two trips to the state playoffs.

At the end of the 2012 season, Tate began applying for college jobs.

“I was on the NCAA website every day looking at the job listings,” she says. “One day, I hadn’t gone to the website yet. A friend walked into my classroom with a sticky note that said there was a job opening at Arkansas State. Everything circles back around. It was a blessing to play basketball and see the world, but it’s good to be back in Arkansas.”

ASU head coach Brian Boyer said at the time of Tate’s hiring: “One could argue that she has accomplished more here at Arkansas State than not only any other women’s basketball player but more than any athlete period. What she has accomplished as a player speaks for itself, but I’m now convinced that she’s ready to make a name for herself as a coach.

“Sonja was not successful as a player because she was just better than everyone. She was successful because she was driven to be better than everyone. This attitude will be great for both our current athletes and our future athletes to be around. … As a bonus, our program has sent a message loud and clear to all other programs within our athletic department that we are not to be taken lightly when it comes to noon pickup games. I’m convinced that the women’s basketball staff will now be considered the favorites.”

Tate lives back in Crittenden County with her aging parents and commutes to Jonesboro each day.

“It’s a blessing to be able to spend time with my parents and be back at ASU at the same time,” she says. “That’s priceless.”

This is the seventh in a series of profiles of the 2013 inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame:

West Memphis has been a hotbed for basketball in Arkansas for many years. Consider that:

— The West Memphis High School boys’ basketball teams have won six state championships — 1980, 1981, 1991, 1997, 2004 and 2005

— The West Memphis High School girls’ basketball teams have won two state championships — 1992 and 2003

— The West Memphis boys also have appeared in the state championship game in two of the previous three years — 2011 and 2010

— The West Memphis girls also have appeared in the finals four other times in the previous decade — 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2009

— The West Memphis boys won overall championships in 1980, 1981 and 1991. The overall tournament was discontinued following the 1992 season

Of all the great basketball players to have come out of West Memphis, Marcus Brown always will rank as one of the best.

And of all the Americans to have competed in the Euroleague, none have accomplished what Brown did. He retired in 2011 at age 37 as the Euroleague’s all-time leading scorer. During his 11 seasons, he rewrote the league’s record books. Brown left the league with 2,715 points, having averaged 15.3 points per game. That’s the second-best average among the top 15 all-time scorers.

At the time of his retirement, Brown also:

— Was the league’s career leader in free throws made with 688

— Ranked sixth in three-point shots made with 323

— Ranked ninth in assists with 457

— Ranked 10th in steals with 184

Brown reached the Euroleague Final Four on three occasions. He also had nine national championships in France, Turkey, Russia, Spain, Israel and Lithuania. Now, he has found his way into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

“Brown enjoys rock star status in several European countries,” writes Billy Woods of the West Memphis School District. “But in West Memphis, the 6-foot-2 Brown can walk the streets in peace and only be recognized by a few for his accomplishments at the old Devil Dome, where he led West Memphis High School to a 1991 state and overall championship.”

As a high school player, Brown was overshadowed in the statewide media by the exploits of Corliss Williamson of Russellville. Brown wasn’t offered a scholarship by the University of Arkansas. He wanted to play at the University of Memphis. He had attended Tiger head coach Larry Finch’s summer camp on multiple occasions, but an offer was slow in coming from Memphis. Brown signed with Murray State University in Kentucky.

Scott Edgar had recruited Brown when Edgar was an assistant on Nolan Richardson’s staff at Arkansas. When Edgar took the head coaching job at Murray State, Brown followed.

Brown would later say of Edgar: “He didn’t talk about how good I was, nothing about NBA prospects. He told me he would help me continue to become a better man and give me a chance at a free education.”

Brown was an All-Ohio Valley Conference performer three times and was twice the OVC Player of the Year. He’s one of only nine former Murray State players to earn All-OVC honors three times. He holds multiple school records, including the most points scored in a game with 45 against Washington University of Missouri in 1995. Brown is third on the all-time points list at the school with 2,236 and holds the Murray State single-season scoring average record with 26.4 points per game during the 1995-96 season.

Brown ranks as the all-time steals leader at Murray State with 232, including a single-season record of 76 in 1994-95. He’s second in school history in single-season free throw percentage at .896 and third in all-time free throw percentage at .849. He’s also second in career made free throws with 585.

Brown often saved his best performances for games against major powers. He scored 33 points against Purdue and 32 points against Louisville in regular season games. He scored 26 points against North Carolina in the 1995 NCAA Tournament.

In February 2010, Brown’s No. 5 was retired at halftime of a Murray State game. His number was the ninth retired at the school.

In a story last year for Memphis magazine, Ed Arnold wrote about what happened following Brown’s senior season at Murray State: “The 1996 college basketball draft class was shaping up to be one of the most promising in NBA history. The names called out in Madison Square Garden on this night included more than a few future Hall of Famers. Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen and Derek Fisher all crossed the podium, put on caps and shook hands with the commissioner that night.

“So too did a prospect named Marcus Brown from Murray State University in Kentucky. Chosen in the second round by the Portland Trail Blazers, the 6-2 guard was coming off a stunning senior season in which he averaged 26 points a game, when he had been named the Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year for a second straight time. When his name was called from the podium, former Grizzlies coach Hubie Brown, then an on-air draft host for ESPN, opined that ‘shooting makes up for a multitude of sins, and this guy can score.'”

Brown headed to Portland’s training camp in the summer of 1996. Arnold wrote: “There were no assurances for a 6-2 shooting guard in the NBA. Because of his size, scouts worried that he wasn’t big enough to play his traditional shooting guard position and that he was too inexperienced handling the ball to play point guard. … Brown played in only 21 games during his rookie season with Portland. He shot a consistent 40 percent from the three-point line and averaged four points in about eight minutes a game, but it wasn’t enough. He was released and signed as a free agent a few months later with the then Vancouver Grizzlies.”

Brown would later say: “I just don’t think they knew what to do with me. I think they really didn’t know how to use me.”

At the start of his second NBA season, Brown said he was “called into the office and told point blank that I wouldn’t play a single game. To this day, I just want to know why. At the preseason combine in Phoenix, everybody plays three games. I was the only guy there who didn’t play three games. I was the only guy in the league getting paid during the lockout of 1999. They cut me before the lockout, and they still owed me money.”

Having been waived during the 1998 season, Brown signed a contract with the French club Pau-Orthez and averaged 20 points per game his first season. He was named the most valuable player in the French League. He tore his ACL during the final game of the French playoffs in 1998. Brown had knee surgery in the United States and then took the 1998-99 season off.

Brown signed with the Detroit Pistons for the 1999-2000 season. He had a good preseason, but the Pistons cut him after six games.

Arnold wrote: “It was a discouraging time. At 26, Brown had been cut by three NBA teams and had undergone major knee surgery, but his family in West Memphis and the desire to make them proud continued to motivate him.”

Brown told Memphis magazine: “I got strength from my grandfather’s honesty. He took me aside and said, ‘Never bring shame on the family.’ All I wanted to do was make my grandparents proud of me, and my mom and dad proud of me. Whatever I did, I was going to put forth my best effort and go from there.”

Brown’s mother was a fixture at basketball games in West Memphis for years. Brown’s own love for the city was evident when he chose to return there following his retirement as a player and help the high school basketball program.

In Europe, Brown eventually would play in nine countries. Asked by Arnold to pick his favorite country, he said: “I say all of them because I was able to see people smile, people have joy, people fulfilled with some kind of a gratification at our victories. My experience was great. Over there you have fans who are so genuine and so true. Their excitement is so pure.”

In a 2011 story for ESPN.com, Evin Demirel wrote: “No matter the European nation in which the next American NBA player plans to make a splash, chances are Marcus Brown has already been there, done that. Success eluded the former Murray State Racer during brief stints with the Portland Trail Blazers and Detroit Pistons. He’s more than made up for it overseas.

“Consider before Allen Iverson and Deron Williams signed contracts with an Istanbul club, Brown played in that city and won two league MVPs and Turkish national titles. NBA journeyman Hilton Armstrong signed with a team in France, where Brown, a shooting guard, had also won two league MVPs and domestic league championships. Later, Brown played for CSKA Moscow and again won two league MVPs and national titles in his two seasons.”

Brown told ESPN: “Coming from West Memphis, I would have never imagined I would go to the Holy Land. I would never imagine I’d be up close to the Eiffel Tower or visit the Colosseum in Rome or the Acropolis of Greece. My time in Europe, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else in the world. My experiences helped make me a better man.”

Brown said he likes “the normal life and being simple. I just go about my business.”

He might like a simple life, but Marcus Brown is the among the most extraordinary basketball players to come from Arkansas. Now, he’s giving back.

West Memphis High School principal John Collins told Memphis magazine: “You walk into his interaction with any of the kids he’s dealing with, and it’s instant respect. He’s got their attention, he’s keeping them captive, he’s teaching them the proper skills they need to play the game and doing it the right way. With the rapport he builds and communication skills that he has, I’m certain Marcus will make a great coach.”

This is the fifth in a series of profiles of the 2013 inductees into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame:

Don Nixon didn’t set out to be one of the state’s best basketball coaches.

In fact, he didn’t plan to be a coach at all.

“I was an accidental coach,” Nixon says. “I was teaching high school science and history at Joe T. Robinson, and the coach left during my first year there. They asked me to step in and take his place. I figured it would be for just a few months. At the end of the summer, they still had not hired a new coach and asked me to do it again. Even then, I thought I would put in a year or two and then move on to something else. Obviously, I never moved on.”

Nixon, who had graduated from Arkansas State Teachers College (now the University of Central Arkansas) in Conway in 1951, went on to a stellar coaching career. He coached four basketball teams — junior high boys, junior high girls, senior high boys and senior high girls — at what’s now Pulaski Robinson from 1952-54 before moving to his high school alma mater at Mabelvale from 1954-59.

After coaching at the junior high level in the Little Rock School District from 1959-67, Nixon coached the boys’ team at Little Rock Central High School for five seasons and the men’s team at UCA from 1972-79. Nixon’s Central Tigers won Class AAAA state championships in 1970 and 1972 along with winning the state’s first overall championship in 1972.

On the evening of Friday, March 8, Nixon will be inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Nixon was raised in rural Pulaski County, where his father sold spring water and later was in the grocery business. Nixon’s father built Lake Nixon, a 35-acre reservoir that’s now owned by Little Rock’s Second Baptist Church and operated as a day camp and retreat.

“A lot of our grocery customers out there were moonshiners,” Nixon says. “They bought plenty of sugar.”

Nixon attended Lawson Elementary School on Lawson Road through the eighth grade. That’s where he learned the sport of basketball on an outdoor court while also excelling at fast-pitch softball, which was a popular sport in those days. He went from there to Mabelvale High School, where he continued to play basketball and softball.

“We only had one softball loss in four years at Mabelvale,” Nixon says. “I played in the outfield mostly. We had two really good pitchers, which was the key in fast-pitch softball. We also had quality basketball teams.”

Nixon joined the U.S. Navy in 1945. He was stationed in San Diego and later in the South Pacific.

“World War II ended, and they let me go after 14 months,” Nixon says. “I decided to attend Little Rock Junior College (now the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) on the GI Bill. My goal wasn’t to coach. My goal was to go into business and make some money.”

After two years at LRJC, Nixon went to ASTC in Conway to earn his bachelor’s degree.

“Jobs were hard to get, so I jumped at a teaching position,” Nixon says. “My first contract was for $2,131. That was for the entire school year.”

After taking on the basketball coaching position, Nixon read everything he could get his hands on about famed Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University) basketball coach Henry “Hank” Iba.

“He was a tough-nosed coach, and that’s what I wanted to be,” Nixon says. “He also stressed defense. I’ve always believed that defense is the key to the game. That’s probably because I was a much better defensive player than I was a shooter in high school.”

Nixon also was the boys’ and girls’ softball coach at Robinson, which didn’t have football in those days. In 1953, both his senior high boys’ and senior high girls’ basketball teams won county tournaments and conference championships.

“I had a really talented team coming back at Joe T. Robinson when Mabelvale called,” Nixon says. “I thought I would turn things around quickly over there, but it took a little longer than I thought. I then had what was going to be my best team at Mabelvale coming back in 1959. I had worked with a guy named Eugene Keaton, who had moved on to the Little Rock School District. He came out to Lake Nixon, where I worked in the summer, and said he needed to see me. I remember exactly what he said: ‘They sent me out here to hire you.’ He already knew what I was making and quoted me a figure that was quite a bit larger. So I left Mabelvale and went to West Side Junior High in Little Rock in 1959.”

Nixon later would move to Southwest Junior High. There were state championship tournaments for junior high basketball in those days. His 1964-65 West Side team was the state runner-up. His 1966-67 Southwest squad won the state championship.

That’s when Nixon was offered the job of head boys’ basketball coach at the district’s largest school, Little Rock Central. He replaced Jim Cathcart, who moved to Hot Springs High School as athletic director. Nixon’s first team in 1967-68 captured a share of the conference championship. His second team was the state runner-up, losing to North Little Rock in the finals. His third team won the state championship in the spring of 1970, beating Fort Smith Northside.

Jim Bailey wrote in the Arkansas Gazette: “Little Rock Central’s Tigers built a mountain of momentum in the second half late Saturday night in Barton Coliseum, and from its pinnacle, they read a most unlikely final score: Central 75, Fort Smith Northside 48. Going for his fifth state tournament championship, which would have been a record, Northside veteran Gayle Kaundart absorbed perhaps the worst beating of his illustrious career.”

Nixon said of Kaundart (who had won state titles at Northside in 1958, 1959, 1965 and 1968): “The old fox is hard to beat. We knew the only way was to keep the pressure on.”

Nixon’s fourth team at the school was the runner-up to North Little Rock. His fifth team in 1972 won the Class AAAA state championship and the first overall title. Overall tournaments pitting the winners of each classification against each other were held from 1972-92.

“I had a lot of great players at Central,” Nixon says. “You don’t make it to four consecutive state championship games without those kind of players. I had coached many of those boys in junior high, so I knew what I was dealing with.”

UCA Coach Cliff Horton and a member of the school’s board of trustees visited Nixon soon after the Tigers had captured the 1972 overall championship. They convinced Nixon to move to Conway and serve as Horton’s assistant. Nixon was being groomed.

After one year, Horton stepped down as head basketball coach to become the school’s full-time athletic director. Nixon moved up to head coach, taking the Bears to NAIA District 17 championships in 1974 and 1975 and spots in the NAIA national tournament at Kansas City.

Nixon retired at the end of the 1978-79 basketball season and was replaced by Don Dyer, now the winningest basketball coach in both UCA and Henderson State University history. Dyer was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

“Don was on the floor all of the time,” Dyer says of Nixon. “Whatever he said, that’s how it went — both for his players and the officials. He always had their attention. He was on the job constantly.”

Cliff Garrison, who spent 31 seasons as the head basketball coach at Hendrix College in Conway and was inducted into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2004, says the most fitting adjective to describe Nixon is “intense.”

“I always admired how he handled his kids,” Garrison says. “His teams executed on defense as well as any team you would ever see. And they were always disciplined. You have to adjust when you move from the high school level to the college level as a coach, and Don had the ability to adjust. He was just a tremendous competitor.”

Garrison especially remembers an incident when UCA was playing Hendrix in that once-heated Conway basketball rivalry.

“After the game, I went into the dressing room UCA had used, and the trash can was just mangled,” Garrison says. “I later found out that Don had kicked that trash can at halftime and gotten his foot stuck. I think the old Navy man came out in him.”

Dyer, meanwhile, remembers a game when his son Don Paul was young. The younger Dyer had eased up to the door of the dressing room to hear Nixon’s halftime talk.

“Don Paul said to me, ‘Dad, you should have heard the things he was saying,'” Dyer says, laughing.

“I was fortunate enough to have smart players,” Nixon says. “They went on to become doctors, dentists and lawyers. A number of them went into coaching. I often think back to when I started as a coach with our teams sometimes playing on outdoor courts.”

It was quite a career for the man who considers himself an “accidental coach.”