Billy Dixon stepped onto the media room stage at Hot Springs’ Bank OZK Arena well drenched in water, minutes after Pine Bluff High School won its second-straight 5A boys basketball state championship.
The Gatorade bath-style celebration for the eighth-year head coach was the crowning moment of a team that fell just short of winning the 5A-South Conference again but over the past two weeks showed classic examples of how to finish games in the clutch.
Win by three points in the first round. Make a running 3-pointer to beat the buzzer and force double overtime in the semifinals. Come from 14 points down to win the top prize.
The Zebras did that.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Yet every championship means so much more than just being the best in basketball. In Pine Bluff’s case, it’s the latest achievement of a resurging school district, but also the latest title in Titletown.
Superintendent Jennifer Barbaree has made it her goal that the Pine Bluff School District is the district of choice for its residents. In at least a couple of years, a shiny new high school will stand tall at 711 W. 11th Ave., replacing a campus that, with the exception of the PBHS Academy building, was last extensively renovated in 1975.
Remember, the voters said yes to funding a new campus last August. The next month, the PBSD board was given full authority, five years after the Arkansas Board of Education dissolved the panel.
As if that’s not enough, PBHS’s McFadden Gymnasium has been open for 73 years. Many of the Zebras’ competitors have built new facilities within the past decade, signs of fiscal strength and community buy-in. But the Zebras themselves have invested into their aging digs what money can’t buy — a tradition of excellence.
“We’re just opening up new opportunities for the youth that’s coming up,” senior point guard Braylen Hall said.
Hours before tipoff, Barbaree hosted local leaders at Pine Bluff Junior High’s ribbon-cutting of a Star Academy curriculum, a way to help students at a crucial point in their academic careers become more engaged in their studies and increase their drive to succeed.
Are academic, athletic and artistic excellence not what our children should strive to achieve? Yes, it’s tradition that our children at least appreciate the history of excellence in their city and school if they are to overcome the adversity we of all ages have faced all too often.
To those who believe athletics and academics don’t go together, Dixon (rightfully) boasted of his team’s collective classroom success. Many of his student-athletes have attained grade-point averages of 3.5 or better.
“I’ve spent the last four years trying to put that out there and let people know that these guys are not just athletes,” Dixon said. “They are student-athletes. We have five or six guys on the team that had a 4.0. So they’re taking care of business. They’re learning and they’re growing. One of the great things is that we didn’t start that way, but that’s our expectation, is that academically, you must grow. As a person, you must grow. As an individual, you must constantly improve.”
The growth of these young men is a collection of points of pride in this city, and the man who’s been the architect of the past two 5A championship teams makes sure his pupils represent the right way.
“We’ve heard all the little phrases — ‘Crime Bluff,’ ‘Back to the Bluff’ — and we try to stay away from all of that,” Dixon said. “I’m real hard on the guys. They can’t wear Crocs or flops in public with me. That’s totally unacceptable. Put on a pair of shoes. We’re not sagging. We’re not wearing headgear inside a building at any point. I don’t care how cold it is outside. Put it on [outside] and when you walk in the building, take it off. We don’t wear pajamas in public.
“It’s just a lot of things I think that take us in the wrong direction,” Dixon continued. “… So it’s great for us to represent and do it and do it right.”
While every school district should certainly invest in up-to-date facilities and adults should make their children marketable for success now and in the future, Pine Bluff’s children — especially those who carry an entire city’s name on their jerseys — have invested in their own success under adversity. Their return cannot be measured in finance, only in the invaluable substance of statewide glory.
While addressing adversity, we cannot forget the young people who have lost their lives to senseless violence in this small town. Their families and peers have mourned deeply and have been charged to press forward in the midst of needless tragedies.
Dixon didn’t bring up the matter postgame, not that anyone from Pine Bluff would forget. It is that the young men and their peers needed something better to remember about Pine Bluff, something for all of Arkansas to marvel.
Pine Bluff’s children are winners. The Zebras have proven that once again, and they have our congratulations.
“Some of these guys are going to be some of the most successful people that give back to our community and help, and they’re going to be difference-makers,” Dixon said. “You have to instill that right character so they move in that direction. I don’t compromise that.”
Neither do these young men. Now they have two state championships to show for it.
I.C. Murrell is senior reporter for The Commercial.