Cliff Cameron: Year 1

Avery Dugan, Staff Writer

Coach Cliff Cameron is entering his first year as head basketball coach and physical education teacher here at Jacksonville High School, but there is a lot more to him. When he was asked why he went into coaching/teaching he said, “I always loved playing sports. I participated in basketball, football, and baseball in grade school and high school. I played one year of baseball at Lincolnland and two years of basketball at Lincolnland.” He ended up getting his first job shortly after that as he coached the boys and girls Sorento Middle School basketball teams in Greenville County. Sorento is where all the magic started for Coach Cameron as he won seven games as a coach at Sorento. After his middle school coaching career, he started coaching at Girard High School for five years, and he started adding up more victories on his resume. After his successful five years at Girard, he took a step up to Pleasant Plains High School about 25 minutes outside of Jacksonville. This is where he coached most of his career as he coached there for 22 years. After 34 years of coaching basketball and 457 career wins, everyone thought they were looking at the end of coach Cameron’s career, but he had a different story. After a couple months had gone by in the summer, JHS’s coach resigned and JHS found a new basketball coach, Cliff Cameron.

Little do most people know, Coach Cameron has not always been the head varsity coach at most of these high schools. For example, during his five years at Girard, only three of the years he was the basketball coach, but for all five he was the head baseball coach. During his 22 years at Plains, he was only head basketball coach for 18 years, four of those 18 years he spent coaching his son Michael Cameron who now attends MacMurray College here in Jacksonville.

Before all of this coaching stuff was even possible though, Cameron attended three different colleges including Lincolnland, Eastern Illinois University where he got his bachelor’s degree, and University of Illinois Springfield where he got his masters.

Coach Cameron is very excited to be here at Jacksonville High School as a part-time physical education teacher and the head basketball coach for the Jacksonville Crimsons.