Coach of the Year built program with steady progress
QUITMAN — Tim Hooten has coached teams to five state championships in two sports in three states, but the title the Quitman basketball girls won this year was the best of all.
In his fourth season with the Lady Bulldogs, Hooten, 62, led them to the first state basketball title in school history. Quitman went 33-3, knocking off Hector for the Class 2A title at Hot Springs’ Bank of the Ozarks Arena, 45-22.
“It’s been fun,” said Hooten, whose daughter and niece were starters and whose parents still live in Guy. “I’ve won a state championship every place I’ve been more than a year. Every one had never won a championship before, and we did.
“My goal is to build programs and get a program going right. Why would you not want to build a program? So many coaches follow the talent, but I’ve always thought as coaches, our job is to develop the talent. And this has been done with homegrown Quitman girls.”
Hooten, 101-26 with the Lady Bulldogs, is the Three
Rivers Edition Basketball Coach of the Year.
“It just all comes down to doing your job and being fair with people and making it about them,” he said. “One of the real tragedies of the coaching business today is young coaches come in, and they think it’s about them. I try to tell them, ‘Make your kids successful, and the accolades will come. If you’re coaching to get accolades, you’ll never get them.’
“That’s the way it used to be, the way we were taught. Maybe it’s biblical. You put other people before you, and you will be blessed. I think that is one of the secrets of my success throughout my career. I’ve always made it about my kids. And I still make it about the kids.”
•• • Hooten grew up in central Arkansas until he was a high school sophomore. He went to kindergarten, first and second grades at Guy-Perkins before his family moved to Little Rock. He attended Mabelvale Junior High School and Little Rock McClellan before heading north, where he graduated from high school in Little Falls, Minnesota.
He earned his degree at South Dakota State, then spent 20 years coaching boys basketball and teaching agriculture at Lennox (South Dakota) High School. His 1991 squad finished undefeated with a state title; in ’94, his Orioles won another one.
From there, he went to Bonneville High School in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and led the Bees to a state title in 2003.
In 2012, though, he got a chance to return to Arkansas when the Bigelow girls job opened.
After 35 years of coaching boys, Hooten made the switch to the girls game.
“Bigelow gave me my way back to Arkansas,” he said. “I was scared to death (to switch to girls) because I’m an old-school coach. I’m very demanding, and I don’t accept much for excuses. I didn’t know how it was going to work with girls because I’d always been told my way of coaching wouldn’t work with them.” Obviously, it has.
His only Bigelow squad won district and regional titles and advanced to the quarterfinals of the state tournament.
Then the girls job at Quitman — so close to his roots — opened.
“I never would’ve thought Quitman would open as quick as it did, but when it did, I applied and got hired,” Hooten said. “[Bigelow officials] were very, very good to allow me to go ahead and come back to my home area, so I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Bigelow for being so gracious to allow me to leave after one year the way I did.”
Hooten’s four seasons at Quitman have shown steady improvement as he has — yet again — built a program:
• 2013-14 — 19-12, first round of the regional;
• 2014-15 — 23-9, first round of the state tournament;
• 2015-16 — 29-3, Class 2A state semifinals; and
• 2016-17 — 33-3, Class 2A state championship.
“Coach Hooten basically started from scratch,” said Reagan Rackley, who moved up as a freshman to play for the Lady Bulldog varsity in Hooten’s first season, along with Maggie Webb, just to have a full squad. “It’s definitely been a long journey, a hard journey, but it’s definitely been worth it.”
Five returning starters boded well for the Lady Bulldogs in 2016-17. Rackley, a 6-1 post player, was named MVP of the state championship game after a 21-point, 12-rebound performance in the final against Hector. Nikki Hooten, the coach’s niece, and Rieley Hooten, his daughter, joined Rackley on the All-State Tournament team.
“One of the most difficult things I had to do was coach my own kid,” Hooten said. “I have found that to be very, very challenging.”
He said Rieley was “a good player who knows the game, a really smart player.”
“But she was in a slump; I’ll put it that way,” Hooten said. “I got on her real hard in one game, and when I came home, I told her when I walked in the door, ‘Sweetheart, I don’t care what your coach said. I think you played a heck of a game.’
“So I’m coach there, but still Dad at home. We try hard not to bring it home with us.”
Upon his arrival at Quitman, Hooten started the girls crosscountry program, at least in part to get the basketball girls in shape. The Lady Bulldogs won the Class 1A/2A state title last fall — the first state title in any sport for the school. He also led the Lady Bulldogs to the state softball tournament the past two seasons.
Hooten said that after the Quitman basketball championship, some of his former players in South Dakota and Idaho reached out with online congratulations.
“One of the things going around was a picture of me yelling at the girls, and one of my former players wrote as a caption, ‘What do you think Coach is saying?’ A kid from the ’90s answered, ‘What were you thinking?’
“I still say that to them today.” Indeed, the Lady Bulldogs’ success has assured Hooten that his philosophy is effective, regardless of whom he’s coaching.
“It works extremely well with girls,” he said. “I’ve got a great bunch, and they’re reaping the success.”
He said he intends to stick around long enough to coach his younger daughter, Taylor Jo (now a seventh-grader), through high school.
But he is adamant that the focus be on his team.
“I want it to be about the girls — not about me,” he said. “I tell them all the time, ‘I’m just the old guy. Use me for the experience I have and what I know, and we’ll get to where you want to be.’”
The Lady Bulldogs are believers.