Longtime Amarillo and Canyon Coach Retiring This Year

After over thirty years of coaching baseball, Coach Gary Hix, is looking to retire at the end of this school year. He is retiring from Coronado High School in Lubbock after eleven years. He had been a coach here in  our area even longer.

I first met him when he started teaching/coaching in Canyon. I moved up to Canyon High School in 1988 Which would also be his rookie year in Canyon. He signed up to be our baseball coach. He also taught World History. Which is where I met him. He was our teacher.

I liked him from the beginning. See I was rather a tomboy and loved me some sports. I had just moved from Chicago a year or so before so he was one that I would get to class and we would immediately start talking about the sport. I loved that. It also didn't hurt that most of the girls in our grade had a crush on him.

I sent a friend of mine a text asking him if he had heard that Coach Hix was retiring this year. David replied:

He was a great coach. I learned a lot from him.

His career in Canyon kept him there for fifteen years. His next stop was moving to Amarillo and coaching at Amarillo High for seven years. I remember running into him at an event at the Amarillo Civic Center not long before the baseball trails took him out of our area and on the way to Lubbock back in 2010.

Good Luck and enjoy retirement Coach Hix.