Male coach of the year: After historic season, Providence’s Danny Hignight finally smiles
It’s not easy being a heavy favorite. Providence High baseball coach Danny Hignight knows that about as well as anybody.
As his nationally ranked Panthers baseball team was barreling through opponents toward what looked to be about as sure-fire a state championship as you’ll find in N.C. high school sports, Hignight — The Charlotte Observer’s boys coach of the year — would not allow himself to smile.
Postgame interviews? Serious. Practice? Even more serious.
“We’ve been ranked in the nation 10 or 12 of the 19 years I have been coaching here,” Hignight said. “In 2012, we were No. 1 in the nation and lost in the first round.”
Back then, Hignight was obsessed with winning and maintaining his team’s lofty national rankings. After the 2012 season ended abruptly, Hignight thought about getting out of coaching.
“I can still remember the tears,” Hignight said. “It was like a black cloud over my head. I didn’t know if I was the right guy for the job. I felt like I cheated our kids even though I didn’t make any errors.”
Then in 2013, Hignight’s team finished with the worst record of any Providence team he had coached until that point — or since — at 15-13 but made the N.C. 4A playoffs.
Hignight felt he had done the best coaching job of his life, with a young team, and it re-energized him.
It also changed his perspective.
“I just stopped paying attention to all of that (ranking) stuff,” he said. “Before then, it bothered me. It was like, ‘We have to win to keep this ranking and get a state championship.’ But in reality, we just have to get better. So in 2014, my mindset just completely changed.”
Hignight’s 2014 team reached the regional finals. His 2015 team finished 31-2 and won the state championship, giving Hignight the ring — and the validation — he had long sought.
That Providence team hit .402 as a team and sent three guys to the professional level.
Since then, the Panthers have been a consistent national power, but this year’s team may have been his best.
Providence finished 34-0 and ended up No. 3 in the MaxPreps national rankings by outscoring opponents 291-53. Hignight’s team trailed just three times all season.
“We averaged 15 strikeouts per game,” he said. “In high school, a team that has to make six defensive plays a night, well, you’re going to put yourself in a good situation ... When you’re that dominant on the mound, and you score first, you’re going to win.”
Hignight said nothing will be like 2015, because that’s his first state championship, but he said this one was special for different reasons.
“(2015) was was my first,” he said, “and there’s like a pressure on your shoulders, through the media, through the parents, and other people who say, ‘You can’t do it,’ and to get it done with that group? That class was the 2013 team. That was really special. This time is extremely special in a different way. My kids are old enough to know what’s going on. My daughter was crying.”
And as the Providence bus got about 20 miles outside Burlington, where the state finals were held, Danny Hignight finally let his guard down.
He let out a big grin, watching his son dancing up and down the aisles, celebrating with the team.
“Our record, man, I didn’t think about it all year,” Hignight said. “I know that’s hard to believe, and still every once in a while, I think about it and I get goosebumps. But I never once thought about or processed it all year, but on that bus ride, I turned around and looked at everybody. I was misty-eyed.
“I said, ‘We just went 34-0. That’s not supposed to happen.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
