The Dodgen legacy
father, son share hoops success
The Farragut athletic director found his son and smiled, pulling him into a hug while saying, “Good job.”
It was a phrase Michael Dodgen has heard plenty from his father, having served as his ball boy and manager before playing point guard for him at Gatlinburg-Pittman High School.
But the words likely felt a little heavier this time, as the younger Dodgen had just led White County to its first state championship appearance since 1992.
It was one of several special occasions for him lately, as Michael also will be inducted into the Basketball Coaches’ Association of Tennessee’s Hall of Fame on Saturday, March 28. He also will be recognized as the Tennessee Class AAA Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.
When he walks into the auditorium, Michael will be joined by his father — linked through last named and a career in which each man has carved his own legacy.
Shooting for success
Before he became a Hall of Fame coach,
Donald was a 6-foot-5 sharpshooter at Gatlinburg-Pittman.
He used skills formed during summer days playing against college-aged kids, scoring 149 points in three straight games to become the program’s all-time leading scorer at 3,318 points.
“I couldn’t play defense,” he summarized with
a wry smile, “but I could score with the best of
‘em.”
That output brought interest from Adolph Rupp at Kentucky, Dean Smith at North Carolina and Ray Mears at Tennessee. Dodgen signed with the Vols, then
continued his shooting prowess at Tennessee Wesleyan before coaching at Riceville Elementary.
That led to an assistant job at McMinn County, where Donald took over as the boys’ head coach in 1976. Seven years later, the Cherokees cracked the state tournament for the first time in two decades — landing in the same bracket as Farragut.
While Donald’s McMinn County program lost 86-37 to the eventual state champs, the outing left an imprint on a young 5-year-old in Memorial Gym.
“When he played Melrose, they had guys who were 6-foot-8,” Michael Dodgen recalled. “They were down 40, but I was the only person still cheering for him.”
That belief carried through Donald’s next role, as he became an assistant at Tennessee Wesleyan before being named their head coach at just 34 years old. From there, he returned to G-P, where Michael became his father’s floor general.
“We didn’t speak a lot during those three years, but it was the trust he had in me and my teammates,” Michael said. “When you’re a point guard
at 5-9 and you’ve got 6-foot-7 and 6-foot-6 on your team, it’s really simple — we knew where the ball was supposed to go.”
Michael continued taking notes from his father through the course of a career that ultimately led to a 14-year stint and 308 wins at Farragut High School.
“Just being around his program, I learned a lot of tricks of the trade that he knows,” Michael said. “How to turn off lights when the other team had a run, how to stop a run if there’s a wet spot on the floor. He’s been at every level, been successful everywhere he’s been. To have that as a reference is special.”
In 2010, Donald resigned with a 655-309 record to become athletic director. But the coaching lessons never stopped.
A legacy continues
The younger Dodgen has applied plenty of those tools in his own journey, earning 300 career wins at Cannon County before moving on to White County in 2015.
From afar, he has admired his father’s work as a coach and administrator, but he also heaped plenty of credit on his late mother, Mary Anne, who died in 2021.
“My mom was the coach of our family,” he said. “We could go to every ballgame, but we had to act right and have our homework done. She held us, accountable and held him accountable too. Any coach has to have a good support group at home, and she was that for us like my wife and kids are for me now.”
So impactful was Mary Anne Dodgen that FHS principal Dr. John Bartlett had
an azalea garden planted on campus in her memory. In a way, those bulbs represent
“one part of a long-limbed coaching tree whose roots were visible that Thursday in Murfreesboro.
“One of the proudest moments of my career,” Donald said of his son. “He’s been with me forever, so it means the world to see where he is now. He is one of the best high school coaches around.”
“That was the sixth time I’ve been in the state tournament, and he’s not missed a single one,” added Michael Dodgen of his father. “He’s always been there for our family when I was little and now that I’m older, too. You see the love and support he has for Farragut. It has always been entrenched in us that if you do it, you do it the right way, and he has.”
