On the eve of official baseball practice starting, the Sacred Heart community was hit hard. The architect of the program, Larry Mixon, passed away early Sunday morning after his second bout with multiple myeloma – a type of bone cancer.
Mixon, 56, became the Sacred Heart head coach in the program’s infancy, and he guided the Crusaders from a gypsy lifestyle of traveling from field to field for practices or games to one of the more fortunate 1A programs in the state with its own indoor and outdoor facilities.
“He loved baseball,” Blake Moore, a former player and coach for Mixon, said. “I mean he is the epitome of baseball, in my opinion. He loved baseball, but I think he loved students more. The amount of time and dedication that he invested into every single one of his players is the thing I’m going to remember most about him. He left such a legacy on the field as a coach, but I think as a mentor, and a person in general, is what he’ll be remembered for.”
Moore played on Mixon’s first team at Sacred Heart in 2010. He was a junior on the team, but it wasn’t his first time being coached by Mixon. Moore was a part of Mixon’s Petal travel team in middle school, and he was excited to see his former travel ball coach become his high school coach.
“When I heard he got the job at Sacred Heart, I was excited because I had already started to build that relationship with him,” Moore said. “I didn’t know anyone on the Petal team besides Ty (Hughes), so he really guided the process of getting to know everybody and he was there for me if I ever felt uncomfortable. While I have more memories at Sacred Heart, that year (with the Petal team) was still big for me because I met a lot of new people and he helped me begin taking on baseball in more of a serious level than I had previously to that point.”
After Moore graduated from Sacred Heart in 2011, Mixon told him there would always be an assistant coach position available if he wanted to coach. He spent the first semester of college out of the area. When he transferred to Southern Miss that spring, Mixon called and offered a spot on his coaching staff.
Moore immediately took Mixon up on the offer. While some parts of being Mixon’s assistant coach didn’t change, seeing how detailed Mixon was with his coaching duties – like taking care of the field – opened Moore’s eyes.
“Being a player, you don’t appreciate a lot of the things he does when you see him as a coach,” Moore said. “He was working on the field night and day wherever we were. I didn’t really know that until I was a coach and I had to help him. He was the same to me as a coach and as a player. He wanted me to be the best I could be in all that I did, which has shaped me into who I am today.”
Sacred Heart didn’t have anything that resembled a home. Mixon would keep his team’s baseball equipment in his truck to take to the various fields the team would use for practice or games.
“The way he always made it sound like was we were just happy to have somewhere to play,” Moore said. “Whether it was an away game, Oak Grove Optimist Park or Petal City Park, he just always made us feel like, ‘Hey, we get to play the great game of baseball,’ and if that meant we play all away games, then we play all away games. He worked so hard.”
One particular field had a battered infield with rocks scattered throughout, and Matt O’Keefe, an assistant coach under Mixon, joked when he hit ground balls to the players, he was worried the ball would skip across abnormally fast dirt or hit a rock and ricochet and hurt one of his players.
Despite having so many people in the community who respected Mixon, Sacred Heart baseball needed to find a permanent home fast. The program was beginning to hit a couple of snags when borrowing fields, especially when the team started making playoff runs a couple of seasons into Mixon’s tenure. It was tough to locate and use a field with just a few days to organize everything.
“He and benefactors were hugely instrumental,” O’Keefe said. “It was him out there politicking and pushing for (the field). Larry was the heart and soul of the baseball program. Without Larry Mixon pushing the baseball field, we wouldn’t have a baseball field.”
When it came to building the field at the Sacred Heart Athletic Complex, Moore echoed O’Keefe by saying Mixon played the biggest role in the process. Brian Kern and Monica Bellipanni, two members of Sacred Heart’s administration, agreed as well, adding the baseball field was his “baby”.
“Nothing happened on that field without Larry knowing it was going to happen,” Kern said. “The chances are, if you were doing something (to the field), he was there anyway. Every part of it, he took responsibility for and he was proud of it.”
Mixon had a vision for the program, Bellipanni said, and people around the program saw that, which helped raise money for the facilities, too.
“People had a belief in the program, and it was a 100 percent effort by the baseball parents,” she said.
Kern agreed, saying it was built the way Mixon wanted it to be built.
“The idea was always we can improve it later,” Kern said. “Let’s just get it built. Larry was willing to do as much as he could to just get to that point. The plan was always that later we could come back and get the dugouts better or put in this, that or the other. Let’s just build what we have to build to have a field, and Larry understood that.”
O’Keefe, who served as Mixon’s assistant coach for the past six seasons, saw first hand how influential Mixon was for the baseball program. O’Keefe admitted the baseball field turned out nicer than he could have ever imagined.
O’Keefe was a decorated basketball coach at Perry Central before retiring when his two children were born. He was also a lifelong friend of Mixon, as the two grew up on the baseball field together before graduating a year apart from Hattiesburg High School. Mixon would take his baseball talents to William Carey, while O’Keefe played at Southern Miss.
Mixon played for John Stephenson at William Carey and current Crusaders’ coach Bobby Halford was a graduate assistant on the team. After two seasons, Mixon had to leave the baseball program because his father, Alford Mixon, passed away.
“He played in all the youth programs and he was always a really good player,” Halford said. “They had a lot of success in the summer with the all-star teams, and he was always one of the better players.”
When O’Keefe retired from teaching and coaching, Mixon offered him an assistant position on his staff, and because they were close friends, O’Keefe said it was a no-brainer.
Together, Sacred Heart would make runs to the 1A South State title series in 2014 and 2015. In Mixon’s eight years with the program, he compiled a 95-90 overall record, but O’Keefe said his record isn’t indicative of what he did for the program.
“He would go the second mile, and doing what he did at Sacred Heart, I mean all of those guys who have coached there, they all have to take on double duty to make it work,” Halford said. “It’s been fun to watch their program evolve. I think that’s something we all recognize.”
As Sacred Heart gears up for the 2018 season, the Crusaders have a varsity, junior varsity and junior high teams, as well as a top-notch facility. All of that is a credit to Mixon’s hard work the last eight years.
“As the athletic director, I never had to worry about the baseball program,” Kern said.
Drew Dewease, an assistant on the football team and three-year assistant under Mixon, will guide the Crusaders this season. It’s a position Dewease never wanted to assume under these conditions.
“Never in a million years did I think anything was going to happen, and never under these circumstances do you want to take over something that a person like Larry has built,” Dewease said. “Not just as a coach, but as a person. I think the one thing I’ll take from Larry is being very detailed about everything. How you wear your uniform, how you take care of the field, how you do infield and outfield, how you schedule practice and things like that, that he was very detailed in.
“The work that he put into the kids in the program. He cared more about the kids than he ever did about himself, and he never wanted any credit. We’re going to try and keep that going – the selflessness. I think our kids are champing at the bit to keep Larry’s legacy going.”
Sacred Heart is scheduled to open the season at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 23. The Crusaders will take on Lamar Christian at Perry Central.
