Since the day he was born, Hugh “Buzz” Phillips has had a ball in his hand.
Phillips, who graduated from Sidney Lanier and has been coaching across Alabama and Georgia since 1970, was recently named to the AISA Hall of Fame.
The current Edgewood Academy assistant coach has spent more than 20 years coaching multiple sports at the high school level and has been a coach and athletic director for nearly 30 combined years at Huntingdon and Troy at the college level.
He’s won over 10 championships in his career, including the 2001 National Small College National Championship with Huntingdon basketball, and has a career coaching record of 658-328.
“When I got that call from the AISA, it was just unbelievable,” Phillips said. “I’ll always cherish that honor. Even when I was not working in the AISA and was at Huntingdon, I was in charge of the AISA hosting its state tournaments at Huntingdon. I prided myself on getting them the best venue and making the event the best that I possibly could. To be selected to the Hall of Fame is unbelievable.”
File / TPI Buzz Phillips coaches the Edgewood Academy boys basketball team during the AISA Class AA state championship in February. Phillips has helped Edgewood to four basketball championships in the last two years and has over 10 state championships to his name.
Phillips knew he wanted to be a coach since he was a teenager.
While playing football for Sidney Lanier in the 1960s, he asked his head coach, Bill Joiner, if Joiner enjoyed coaching. After Joiner told him he loved it, Phillips expressed his own interest.
Fast forward a few years and a college degree later, Phillips was starting his coaching career as an assistant at Chambers Academy. He then spent the next 20 years coaching at the high school level. Following a two-year stint at Chambers, he went on to work at Lee Academy, Coosa Valley Academy, Sylacauga High School, Riverview Academy in Georgia, and Southwest Georgia Academy.
After winning six state championships at Southwest Georgia – three football, two basketball and one baseball – he decided he wanted to give college athletics a try.
“The first part of my career, moving around with my wife and having us children, was like any other coach,” Phillips said. “You’re there one day and you don’t know if you’ll be there the next and stuff like that. I was lucky that I had a few years in each spot.”
While helping out at an Auburn baseball camp in 1991, Phillips ran into Huntingdon baseball coach Scott Patterson. The two teamed up with Butch Thompson, now Auburn’s head baseball coach, to form the Huntingdon baseball staff.
Phillips served in that role until 1996, when he was asked to restart the Huntingdon men's basketball program after 17 years of not having a team. He accepted that position, with his son Scott Phillips right beside him as an assistant, and welcomed 20 freshmen into the Huntingdon program.
“Every single one of those freshmen thought they were as good as the next one,” Phillips said. “We played our schedule and took our lumps the first year, but we got better and better and better. A few years later, we won the national championship and I was named the National Coach of the Year.”
Cliff Williams / TPI Buzz Phillips helps from the Edgewood bench.
Phillips spent the next four years at Troy, serving as the director of marketing, director of football, basketball and baseball operations and as the athletic director of special events.
There, he received some of the biggest honors of his career.
He was given the Trojan Award, the Women’s Sports Foundation Joyce Sorrell Achievement Award, the Troy Alumni of the Year in 2003, and received the 2004 All-America Football Foundation Bill Wade Unsung Hero Award.
“I am as proud of my accomplishments at Troy as I am anything,” Phillips said. “I received some great awards, and was given the highest award in the athletic department, the Troy University Trojan award.”
In 2004, Phillips returned home to Huntingdon with Mike Turk and took over the athletic director role. He served as the athletic director from 2004 to 2013, and served as the women’s head coach from 2006 to 2018 before he retired.
He accumulated a 164-129 record as the women’s head coach and reached the GSAC Conference Championship in 2009 before being named GSAC Coach of the Year.
During his nine-year tenure as athletic director, Huntingdon's athletic department expanded from 11 sports to 17.
“It went really well during that time period,” Phillips said. “I always felt like I was at home when I was at Huntingdon. I felt like I really earned my spot there and I felt like that was my place. For 27 years, that’s where I was.”
Cliff Williams / TPI Buzz Phillips helps from the Edgewood bench.
Phillips then retired, but that didn’t last long.
While sitting on the couch watching a game show, Phillips’ wife Nancy, asked him when he was going to find something to do.
That’s when he realized how much he missed coaching.
“I told her I was fixing to look,” Phillips said. “I made the decision right there on the couch that I may be retired but I was getting back into it. I had to be active.”
Since coming out of retirement, he has coached at both Hooper and Edgewood academies and has helped lead the Wildcats to four basketball championships – two girls and two boys – in the last two seasons.
Also since that time, he has been inducted into two Hall of Fames – AISA and Huntingdon’s – and has had the Huntingdon College Athletic Field House named after him.
Phillips currently has no plan to retire. He will never take another head coaching job, but winning four state championships in two years has lit another fire under him.
“I may have 1 or 2 years left that I want to do this, or I may be the oldest coach ever,” Phillips said. “It just depends on what the Good Lord has in store for me.”
He’s also currently an assistant coach for the team his son is the head coach of, and he’s enjoyed coaching with him again.
Cliff Williams / TPI Buzz Phillips helps from the Edgewood bench.
The two first coached together starting in 1996 with the Huntingdon basketball team, and they won the national championship together in 2001. For Phillips, winning that title with Scott was one of the proudest moments of his coaching career.
“Winning that national championship and seeing Scott up there cutting the net down right before I got up there and cut my piece of the net down, it’s something I’ll cherish forever,” Phillips said. “And then winning that title together last year was great. I wouldn’t trade last year for anything in the world.”
Cliff Williams / TPI Edgewood celebrates a state championship against Abbeville Christian.
While the winning has been great, the impact Phillips has had on the kids he’s coached is even greater. Phillips has had a stellar rapport with kids everywhere he’s been, dating back to his teams at Huntingdon. There’s still kids he coached in the 1980s who wish him a happy birthday each year and check in on him.
Phillips can walk down any hall at Edgewood Academy on any day and get stopped to talk to multiple students just wanting to chat.
That’s because of his personable personality and the fact that he cares about each student and person he speaks with.
“I’ve always been fortunate enough for the kids to love me and I’ve used that to benefit the teams that I coached,” Phillips said. “I’ve always had that with the teams I’ve coached and it’s Year 47. I want to keep that forever. The day I lose that is the day I say it’s time for me to get on Old Silver and ride off into the sunset.”
Cliff Williams / TPI Edgewood’s Lindsey Brown celebrates a state championship.
