LITTLE ROCK — Second in a series previewing the 2013 inductees into

Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Don Nixon had filled a Navy hitch and graduated from the University of Central Arkansas before he had any illusions of coaching basketball - or anything else.

“I came out of college looking for a job, but not any kind of coaching job,” said Nixon, one of the eight 2013 Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductees. “Finally I heard that Joe T. Robinson High School had lost its [boys] coach. I interviewed for the job and was hired, but it worried me a little that coaching athletics would be part of my duties.”

He was lucky, he said, that “Robinson dominated its high school league the two yearswe worked there, and Robinson rarely lost either a boys basketball game or a girls basketball game.”

Towering success followed Nixon to Mabelvale High School, Westside and Southwest junior high schools, and Little Rock Central High School. In seven years as a UCA basketball coach, Nixon’s teams earned two bids to the NAIA national tournament at Kansas City.

“The first thing I learned,” Nixon said, “was that smart players will help you win. When a player holds up his hand to ask a question, the coach had better ask him what he wants to say, because he might tell you what you need to know.”

Don Dyer, after compiling fascinating records for Henderson State, turned around and started compiling fascinating records with UCA.

“One thing about UCA,” Nixon said, “they’ll get the guy they want, but almost always they find a slot for theguy who lost his job.

“I’ve had all kinds of teams. The most unusual, I think, was our largest and slowest. Most of them were 6-6 or 6-7, and down to 6-4 or 6-3. We’d load up one side of the court sometimes.”

Fred Allen, a Little Rock Central star of some 20 years ago, possibly was the most impressive member of the Nixon circuit at the time.

“Every time you look at Fred, his arms look about 10 inches longer than they did afew minutes ago,” somebody joked.

Nixon shrugged when he was asked the team’s overall record.

“It might take a month and five or 10 people to thrash all of it out,” Nixon said.

Sports, Pages 23 on 02/13/2013