Twenty-one months ago, Adam Hester was as occupationally happy as he could be. Loved his job, loved where he worked and felt like he was exactly where he needed to be at that point in his life.
Then the phone rang.
It was a call that inquired as to whether Hester would like to throw all of that aside and try something that he had never done before. It wasn’t exactly a paved road.
He really didn’t know what he was getting into, but how could he? No roadmap, no handbook, no model to follow. Sure, there would be people willing to help, but basically what he was being asked to do was going to have to be done with blind faith.
So Adam Hester left what he loved to take on a new job, which didn’t actually exist, at a place that not a whole lot of people had heard of.
Not exactly the way LinkedIn draws it up.
You can find Hester these days at Providence Classical Academy in Bossier City as the athletic director. And head boys soccer coach. And assistant girls soccer coach. And anything else the school might need him to be.
“Sometimes I look back,” he says, “and wonder what I was thinking.”
Since he left the comfort of his position as social studies teacher/soccer coach at Calvary Baptist long behind him, Hester has been up for the challenge of building a high school athletic program. Not quite from scratch, but a dramatic shift from what it had been.
“It’s a total mindset thing,” he says. “It’s something we are still trying to figure out. And probably will be trying to figure out for a while.”
Hester was brought in as the school began to move from playing in the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools (MAIS), where the athletic program landed after reaching the high school level.
Job One for Hester was to steer the transition from the MAIS (which stretches across four states) to the Louisiana High School Athletic Association.
Once Hester, who was quite familiar with the working of the LHSAA from coaching at Calvary, was handed the keys, there was no shortage of questions. What sports would need to be offered or added? What facilities needed to be built? Who was going to coach these sports?
Three games into the boys basketball season a year ago, the coach departed. About two weeks before the baseball and softball seasons, both of the coaches of those sports also left.
“That was challenging,” he says.
Welcome to the LHSAA.
But lo and behold, an experienced high school softball coach was teaching math at Providence. “We are two weeks away from the season,” Hester told him. “Uh, we need you.”
Job accepted.
A former basketball coach came out of retirement to coach both basketball teams before retiring again.
Hester was able to navigate through that first year before getting everything steered in the right direction in Year Two.
A few months ago, there was nothing but trees surrounding the Providence campus (located on Old Brownlee Road). Not anymore. The softball field will have some home dates this year while the baseball team will play a road-only schedule in 2026. There will be a soccer field with a track surrounding it. Having a gym completed for volleyball and basketball has been an enormous step forward.
The trees are gone. Providence athletic facilities are growing in their place.
Providence will play in District 1-B for the next two school years for basketball, baseball, softball and track after the recent reclassification. (Soccer and volleyball will play in divisions.) Hester says there is “no desire” to add football.
Scheduling can be a problem as many of the Class B-level schools do not offer some of the sports that Providence plays and the school is surrounded by Class 5A and 4A schools.
“You see the vision that they had a few years ago all coming to fruition,” Hester says. “These people had a plan, and they are going to get it done.”
Soccer is still Hester’s first athletic love and being able to still coach that sport is “vital,” he says.
“If I was in the office all day and not interacting with kids, it wouldn’t be worth it,” he says. “But I’ve always got something to do. There’s always frustration, but I really enjoy moving around at that fast pace and trying to get ahead of things and solve problems.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com
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