Campus athletic coordinator and head football coach Jeremy Hickman strives to make an impact on his athletes’ lives. He prides himself on maintaining strong relationships and making the kids in his life better people by modeling the behavior he expects from his athletes.
Hickman’s goal came full circle for football coach Chase Brown. For all four years of Brown’s time at Kerrville Tivy High School, Hickman was a coach who made a huge impact.
“I was a little bit of a trouble-kid in high school, and I moved out of my house in high school — kind of house-hopping,” Brown said. “And [Hickman] was really my father figure that gave me a stable, adult male figure to look up to. Me and my dad didn’t have a great relationship, so Coach Hickman was kind of that adult male figure that I would go to and used for guidance when I had issues in life.”
Hickman understood that younger people are trying to figure things out in high school, and they can be a little reckless. He knew that Brown needed to go through the phase of thinking actions have no consequences, but he always offered up his wisdom.
“I did not always listen, but he always gave me somewhere that I could go, and he would stay,” Brown said. “Even though he had his family to get home to, he’d stay after practice to talk to me on those days I was just losing it and I needed somebody. He was there for me.”
Hickman felt that Brown would make a great coach from very early on, so he wanted to keep a place open for him as soon as he graduated from college. Hickman also knew that Brown had to tackle some adversities before he could achieve his goal of becoming a football coach.
“He’s not even close to the same person [today as he was back then.] I think boys sometimes go through those stages where you do things, and you just don’t think that it’s a bad thing or it’s something that could really hurt you in the end,” Hickman said. “I’m not trying to say that Coach Brown was a bad kid, but his decision-making was bad. He did some things that were not productive to his career.”
Brown struggled to take Hickman’s advice at times, but as he looks back, he sees the wisdom and resonates with it even more. He understands that Hickman likes to get to the root of the problem and make things better.
“A lot of the sayings and the stuff he does almost comes off as a little bit cheesy at times when you first get to know him,” Brown said. “Once you spend more time around him, you start to truly realize that’s genuinely how his brain thinks, and that’s how he operates about his daily life. To some people, it may seem corny or cheesy, but to him, he truly believes those things.”
Hickman gets his passion for coaching from situations like Coach Brown’s. He coaches to help kids like Brown become more hardworking and make better decisions.
“I have nothing but the utmost respect for him, the way he handled his business and the way he overcame a lot of adversity to get where he’s at. That adversity kind of shaped him to who he is today,” Hickman said. “I love football, and football’s the platform that God gave me, but my passion is this situation right here. To see Coach Brown where he was at, the frustration that I had during times where I saw a student who had a ton of potential but self-destructed over and over again, to see where he is now, I’m very proud of that.”
Brown said that Coach Hickman’s commitment to bettering his students was very apparent in his life. He said that Hickman will do anything for those who are dedicated and do right by him.
“If you’re lazy, you’re not necessarily going to like him because he’s going to call you out for being lazy, but if you work hard and you do the things that need to be done, he will take a bullet for you,” Brown said. “I remember the hard work and the hours he would work. I remember there in Kerrville, where I grew up, the football field is separate from the high school. Every day when I drove home from my friend’s, I didn’t live with my parents, so I would go all over the place, I would drive past the stadium every night late at about 10 o’clock. His truck would still be there almost every night.”
Their relationship was not always smooth-sailing, but they never gave up on each other. There were times that Hickman would be very frustrated with Brown’s actions, but they would get through it with hard conversations and tough love.
“Many times he made me really mad, but there was one particular time that he made me mad. It was a time for us to have a conversation like, ‘Coach Brown you cannot do these things.’ We had a hard conversation about being reckless with what you’re doing,” Hickman said. “I don’t think that he ever really got the grasp of that until his senior year, and it started to come into fruition as those things went on. We had a tough relationship; I mean there were times he didn’t like me and I didn’t like him, and that’s the truth. But, I loved him.”
Now that the two are coaching side-by-side, the cycle of making a difference for students is continuing. Brown has started to build strong relationships with kids who may not be the easiest to handle at times.
“The most impressive thing to me [about Coach Brown] is the relationship he’s built with kids that were difficult. The kids love him wherever he’s been,” Hickman said. “It’s impressive seeing the difference he’s made with the kids and seeing how kids are before he was their coach to after he was their coach with the way they handle things, the way they respond, the way they compete.”
Brown models the leader-role that Hickman showed him in high school. He is leaving the same lasting impact on his athletes.
“I don’t know if [his coaching relationships] are modeled after me, or he knows that he was a mess up,” Hickman said. “And somebody never gave up. I never gave up on him.”
