By CURTIS ROCKWELL/Sports Director

PASS CHRISTIAN — After five years at the helm of the D’Iberville Warriors, Robin Sikes is heading west a bit down the Gulf Coast.
As first reported exclusively by SouthMiss6 Sports last month, Sikes was offered and accepted the head boys basketball job at Pass Christian High School. The move was finalized late Tuesday afternoon when he was approved by the Pass Christian School Board.
.Sikes is coming off a 10-18 campaign with the Warriors, and DHS missed the Class 7A South State playoffs.
Prior to that however, Sikes guided the Warriors to winning records and state playoff appearances in back to back seasons in 20223 and 2022 as well as a solid 17-8 mark in 2021.
One of the biggest highlights for Sikes during his tenure at D’Iberville was guiding the Warriors to back-to-back tournament championships in the prestigious Admiral Hardwood Club Holiday Classic in Gulfport in 2021 and 2022.

Sikes came to D’Iberville after spending two seasons as the head coach at Moss Point where he led the Tigers to back to back Class 4A South State playoff appearances. He also previously served as an assistant coach at his alma mater St. Martin before going to MPHS.
He was a standout player for the Yellow Jackets and then signed a basketball scholarship with the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.

He is set to replace one of the living legends at the helm of the Pirates in Buddy Kennedy, who stepped down after nearly 30 years as PCHS head coach at the end of last season.
Kennedy retired from his post after 29 seasons and over 600 total wins in two separate stints at the helm of the Pirates. 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 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.