By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASS CHRISTIAN — South Mississippi has had its own “Coach K” leading the way in prep basketball circles for most of the past three decades.
And now, just like the “Coach K” on the collegiate level did two years ago, one of the most successful prep basketball mentors ever in the “Southern Six” is stepping away from the game.
Pass Christian’s Buddy Kennedy retired from his post as the boys head basketball coach Friday afternoon. He leaves after 29 seasons and over 600 total wins in two separate stints at the helm of the Pirates.
“Coaching this year’s team was a tremendous amount of fun, and there’s a great many of those players returning,” Kennedy said, in an exclusive interview with SouthMiss6 Sports Saturday afternoon. “However, the fun of coaching started getting outweighed by the stress of coaching. It was an honor to work for the Pass Christian School District and a privilege to be in charge of their boy’s basketball program for such a long time. Someone is going to be getting a great job.”

Kennedy stepped down from his first stint as PCHS head coach in 2016, after earning his 500th career win in 24 years on the job. He took just a couple of seasons off, however, before returning to the bench.
In his 29 seasons, Kennedy paced the Pirates to at least a 20-win season an amazing 20 different times, including this season when the Pirates went 25-9 and were a perfect 10-0 in Region 8-4A play in capturing the league championship.
Kennedy’s final team finished just one step short of another trip to the Overall State Tournament after falling to Raymond High in the Class 4A South State Quarterfinal round in Poplarville on the campus of Pearl River Community College one week ago. Raymond won its second consecutive Class 4A state championship Saturday afternoon.
At one point, Kennedy called the 2008 win by his Class 3A squad over then perennial Class 6A state power Gulfport 62-58 to take the prestigious Admiral Hardwood Club Holiday Classic in Bert Jenkins Gym on Gulfport’s home floor a turning point for his program.
That win vaulted Kennedy’s crew to a pair of appearances in the Class 3A State Championship game over the next three seasons, including winning the only Gold Ball in program history in 2009 with a 52-50 win over Raymond thanks to a spinning lay-up by Blake Evans in the final seconds.

That season also marked Kennedy’s best overall mark with the Pirates in his almost three-decade career as his team went 32-2 in capturing the crown.
Two years later, they went 30-6 with five of those losses to coming at the hands of powerful and neighboring rival St. Stanislaus. The Rock-A-Chaws, under the direction of Jay Ladner, went on to beat PCHS in the Class 4A State championship game that season 54-38.
Ladner is now in his fifth season as the head men’s basketball coach at The University of Southern Mississippi.

The Pirates have averaged right at 22 wins a season under Kennedy’s guidance.
“Well, when I first took over I discovered that Pass High had never won a district championship in boys basketball, so that was our first goal.” Kennedy continued. “Once we started to contend for district championships our goal was to get to Jackson and see how we held up against the best competition in the state. We wanted our program to be highly regarded and we wanted our kids to feel like they could compete with anyone.”
And, they did just that. Kennedy first took the helm of the Pirate program in the early 1990s, and they went on to make a whopping 23 appearances in the state playoffs and won 11 district titles over that time.
The search is already underway for Kennedy’s replacement.