Jack Rigdon likes the small-school atmosphere, so Community R-6 seems like a good fit.

Rigdon was hired as the Community R-6 boys basketball head coach this summer and will be entering his seventh year coaching basketball. The Trojans begin playing scrimmages this week in summer shootouts, including some games today in Higbee, but have had some open gyms with their new coach.

Rigdon came from an assistant girls basketball coach job at St. Vincent, who finished as a state runner-up for the second straight season. It was two years ago, however, when Rigdon first encountered some of the Trojans when they played his Chamois Pirates with him as the head coach and athletic director.

“I felt like this was an opportunity that I wanted to be a part of,” Rigdon said. “I love being part of small schools, and I felt like this was a fit after going through the interview process with Mr. (Chad) Harter and Mr. (Bob) Davies and talking with Coach (Bob) Curtis over the phone. It is a really great family-type of atmosphere.”

Rigdon said the community has felt supportive and his players have been welcoming in the limited time they have had together. He feels more comfortable working closer to his fiance in the St. Louis area and added the four-day school week helps.

Along with being the boys coach and athletic director at Chamois, Rigdon was also a volleyball coach, business teacher and FBLA advisor. A year ago, he was the athletic director and teacher at St. Vincent when the school won eight district titles and six top four state finishes. At Community R-6, Rigdon will be a physical education teacher along with his coaching duties, so he said the weight room will be a priority. 

“Typically, when you are at smaller schools, there are going to be multiple hats that are filled,” Rigdon said. “I enjoy having that experience and doing that.”

The Community boys have had several coaches over the past few years, but Rigdon is familiar with that as well. He recalls playing for three coaches in four years at Spokane in southwest Missouri, winning a combined 18 games in his first three years and then 17 games and a district title in his senior year. 

“My biggest thing is building a team culture,” Rigdon said. “I’ve been on the positive side of having success but have also been on the other side of it as well. We’ve been doing a lot of different types of drill work that I’ve learned from my time coaching college and high school.”

Rigdon has also coached at the college level as an assistant at Mission University and started his coaching career on AAU sidelines while he was a student at Northwest Missouri State University. He has worked with kids in different age ranges, but Rigdon said he wants every kid to be prepared for the future.

“The game of basketball comes to an end at some point,” Rigdon said. “My goal as an educator and as a coach for them is to help them instill character traits from the game of basketball that they can use in real life. You’ll hit adversity so how do you respond from those things? Also, learning how to win, how to act when you lose, and how to respect the officials and the other team.”

Rigdon said he told the parents during his meeting with them that he is going to “instill discipline and character into these kids and make them better men.”

The roster that Rigdon is inheriting brings much “ability and talent, he said. Not every school has several kids that are at least 6-foot-5 like the Trojans. It is now his job to help them achieve their goals of winning more games and picking up a district victory.

“We have some guys skilled on the post side,” Rigdon said. “We have some really good guards as well. The skill is there. It’s going to be a lot of learning. They are brand new to me, and I’m brand new to them. When you’re looking at raw talent, there’s a lot of ability there."