As South Adams prepares for a new boys basketball season minus many of their key players from a year ago, they will also be looking for a new coach.
Josh Hendrixson, who led the program for the last two seasons and has been with the staff for 10 seasons, resigned from the position. That resignation was made official at Tuesday, September 14’s school board meeting.
The Starfires finished 15-9 in the 2020-2021 season, their first 15 win season in five years and matching the highest win total since the program won 17 games all of the way back in the 1993-1994 season. South Adams also won the ACAC Tournament last season beating Bluffton in the finals after stopping Southern Wells and Adams Central in the first two rounds. The team finished second in the ACAC regular season, finishing 4-2 in conference play; they lost to Canterbury in the opening round of Sectional play.
That team did however post the best overall record in the ACAC as well as the only team in the conference to average more points scored than points given up per game (65.25 versus 58.92).
Now Hendrixson will move on to be the head coach at Madison-Grant, where the Argylls went 19-4 last season. The Fairmount, Ind. team is also the defending Central Indiana Conference champions, going 7-0 in conference in 2020-21; their first title since sharing it with three other schools in 2012.
He will teach special education at Madison-Grant, a job opening that helped make the coaching move the right fit. Another part of Hendrixson’s move means being closer to family in Muncie and Noblesville and lifelong friends at Madison-Grant.
“It’s a program that has had some recent success and a program that has a pretty good foundation,” Hendrixson said. “There are a lot of factors, a lot of boxes that were checked when it came too Madison-Grant.”
“We can’t always control when opportunities happen and coach had an opportunity come up that he hadn’t planned on, that he felt was a great fit for him personally and professionally,” South Adams athletic director Jason Arnold said. “I’m thankful for the years he has given us as a JV coach and as a head coach, and I wish him the best of luck in the next chapter of his career.”
Hendrixson is in his tenth year as a teacher at South Adams. He started with the school year one year after he joined the coaching staff. He says that one of this fondest memories to look back on is winning the ACAC Tournament last season, the program’s first in 28 years. Part of that was watching that particular group grow from 2-21 as freshmen and sophomores to their success last season as juniors and seniors.
“It’s not like I was looking by any stretch, it just happened to be,” Hendrixson said. “I can’t say anything but great things about South Adams and the way they have treated me, how supportive the administration has been and the community; it has just been fantastic.”
South Adams’ search for a new coach has already begun according to Arnold. He says that he plans to move as quickly as possible to find a qualified candidate so the person has time to get to work prior to the first practice. The new coach will acquire a program that was successful last season, but has not won a ACAC regular season title since 1997.
6 of the top 8 players from last year’s team have graduated but they will return leading scorer Trey Schoch (16.7 points, 4.2 assists/game), while the status of fellow senior Aidan Wanner (13.3 pts/game) remains up in the air following an injury during football season. Jordan Hinshaw is the only other returning player who saw time last year, averaging just 4.5 minutes per game.
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