Former coach returns to Bryan Station’s ‘gold mine’ ready to rebuild basketball success
A day after revisiting its past to hire a girls’ basketball coach, Bryan Station High School hopped back into the time machine to find its new boys’ coach.
Champ Ligon Jr., who built the Bryan Station boys’ basketball team into a top-ranked powerhouse in the mid to late 2000s, has returned to lead the Defenders once again after more than a decade away.
“I’m excited. I think we can do the same job we did the first time,” Ligon told the Herald-Leader. “It’s going to take a lot of work. But like I said the first time I took the job, Bryan Station is just a gold mine waiting to be mined. There’s great kids, there’s great teachers, there’s great administration. It’s just about getting in there and grinding every day until you find that success you want.”
The school announced Ligon’s hiring on social media Friday. He succeeds Nimbo Hammons, who guided Bryan Station for three seasons and had an 8-9 mark during this year’s pandemic-marred campaign. Earlier in the week, Bryan Station named Serena Sandusky as it’s girls coach. Sandusky was one of the school’s most celebrated players during her career.
The hiring is a homecoming for Ligon, 58, who grew up in Lexington, is a graduate of Lexington Catholic and developed a lot of wonderful relationships during his time at Bryan Station.
“Several of the players that I coached the first time around, they have kids coming up,” Ligon said. “There’s a strong possibility that I’ll be coaching the sons of former players, which will present an interesting dynamic but should be fun.”
Those former players were a big reason Ligon wanted to come back.
“I had so many former players reach out to me, so, it just felt like the right thing to do,” Ligon said. “It’s a labor of love. I’ve got a lot of love for my former players and they return that love tenfold.”
Ligon has won everywhere he has been and steps back into coaching after two years away.
He resigned as the girls’ basketball coach at Male High School in 2019 after leading the Bulldogs to two 7th Region titles and two Girls’ Sweet 16 semifinals (2015, 2019) in six seasons. His record at Male was 152-38. The Bulldogs’ 2015 region title was their first since 1996.
In a boys’ coaching career that also included Atherton, Male and Shelby County, Ligon’s record is 366-210. In his eight seasons at Bryan Station, Ligon went 146-90 with two district titles.
“It’s just setting high expectations for kids. They want to be coached, and they want to be coached hard, and they want to have success,” Ligon said of the secret. “You want to make it fun, … really what kids are looking for is somebody that believes in them, and they’ll usually rise to whatever expectation you set. It might take a while, because it doesn’t happen by snapping your fingers.
“It’s a lot of hard work. But kids appreciate that you care about them and believe in them. And once they believe in you, they’ll run through a wall for you.”
Ligon previously coached the Defenders from 2002 through 2010, a stint that included the high school career of Shelvin Mack, who later went onto reach an NCAA Tournament finals with Butler and made a career in the pros.
Ligon took a team that went 4-24 in 2003 to a district title and a 24-8 record in 2005. Despite the improvement, Ligon was inexplicably fired in the summer of 2007 just as Station was about to enjoy its new basketball gym. He was hired back 11 days later after a public outcry.
The Defenders won another district title in 2008, Mack’s senior year. Before eventually falling to Lexington Catholic in the 11th Region finals that season, Bryan Station had achieved a No. 1 ranking on its way to a 30-3 record. Ligon stepped down two years later and became an assistant coach in Louisville before taking the Male girls’ job.
Bryan Station loses seven seniors off this past year’s squad, but it returns a number of players, including leading scorer J’Marious Lindsay.
“We’re going to meet with the players Monday,” Ligon said. “I know we have some players coming back with some talent, and we’ve got some size. We’ll just go from there.”
