Using the same formula that led to its first-ever CIAA Championship, St. Augustine's College dipped into the high school ranks to find an alumnus to coach its men's basketball team.
Thomas Hargrove, head coach at Anacostia High School in Washington D.C. for the past seven years, will replace George Williams, who had served as interim head coach last season.
Four years ago, St. Aug picked Norvell Lee, the winningest active high school coach in North Carolina, to take over a program that had won only four games the year before he arrived. Lee promptly rebuilt the program, guiding the team to a school-record 25 wins in 1996-97 and the Falcon's first CIAA Championship.
Five months later, Lee tragically died of a heart attack.
Rather than immediately search for a new coach, Williams, who is also the school's athletics director and head track coach, chose to take the position himself on an interim basis. "We need time to heal", he said at the CIAA basketball roundup in November.
Hargrove, 55, was the choice of a search committee which selected him over Barber-Scotia assistant coach Anthony Odom and Jeffery Bernstein, a high school coach from Winder, GA.
"We were overwhelmed by the amount of interest, and we wished that we could have hired the other two coaches as assistants," Williams said. "The final candidates were so strong."
Hargrove, who begins work on July 1, coached the East team in the 1997 McDonald's All-American game. He has been coaching and teaching for 28 years and has been an employee of the District of Columbia school system since 1967. He has an overall coaching record of 328-126 and has won championships in baseball, basketball and football.
"He knows how to win and , most importantly, we believe that he knows how to mold and handle student-athletes," said Williams.
Hargrove holds a bachelor's degree in health and physical education from St. Augustine's and a Master's degree from the University of Maryland.
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