Man on a Mission: Stony Point’s Antoine Thompson strives for success on and off the court
Stony Point Boys Basketball Coach Antoine Thompson is on a mission.
Sure, Thompson would like to lead his Tigers back to the UIL 6A Championship game for a second straight season and come away victorious this time, but he’s thinking much bigger.
“I pride myself in building a better society by increasing rigor and opportunity amongst student-athletes today,” Thompson boldly stated on the Tigers’ basketball booster club site. “Serving others is a profound dedication of mine, and building relationships with young student-athletes is residual motivation for me.”
Thompson, a four-year varsity letter-winner at Manor High School and two-time All SCAC collegiate player at Austin College, returned to the Austin area as Stony Point’s boys head basketball coach prior to the 2022-23 season. Thompson, 33, inherited a Tigers program that after years of sub-.500 seasons, had gone 24-9 the previous year under his predecessor. The young coach kicked in the afterburners – and his Tigers responded with a 32-2 campaign that saw them reach the regional semifinals in his first year as a varsity head coach anywhere.
Last season’s squad followed up with a gaudy 38-2 mark, falling in the 6A State Finals to Plano East. As of press time, Stony Point sits at 13-0 in District 25-6A and 26-4 overall (including two overtime losses). A third consecutive 30-win season is definitely within reach.
When asked to explain how Thompson, whose only previous coaching experience was as an assistant at Austin LBJ and the head coach for ASAK basketball, an Adidas-sponsored Select team, was able to elevate Stony Point’s program so fast, he had a ready explanation.
“Just my ability to be consistent with these young men,” he stated simply. “The work that we put in is equivalent to what collegiate campuses are doing at the Division 1 and Division 2 level. And the buy-in from the parents and the players; just parents and players understanding the magnitude of, if you have aspirations of college or hard working in life, period, we try to manifest that through basketball and we utilize basketball as a tool. And it’s just sharpening these young men up to manifesting what their life blueprint is gonna look like.”
While Thompson has certainly whipped his Tigers into shape on the court, it’s that last part -- what that discipline and work ethic means beyond the court -- that matters most to the consummate educator and mentor, an AVID coordinator at Stony Point High School.
“I think it’s parallel to everything we want to advocate for within the program,” he declared. “Of the 162 young men (that have) come through the program in the last three years, we only had one individual fail that entire time. So, it correlates to everything that we do.
“We try to push work ethic in the classroom; we try to push work ethics on the floor, and we try to push just being upstanding young me in the community. We built that over the last three years, and it’s been a great opportunity for us to continue to build the manifestation of what a solidified program out of Central Texas looks like, beyond the Westlakes, the LBJs, the Lake Travises of the world.”
The Tigers have taken tremendous strides to inject themselves into those “best in the area conversations and Thompson is quick to share the credit.
“What Stony Point has done, they were in the middle of the pack, lower pack… (Stony Point) was a football school early on,” he acknowledged. “It’s a testament to my coaching staff; it’s a testament to the player personnel that have come through the last three years under my tutelage… of why this success is happening.
“We’re pretty resilient with expectations from players to parents to community supporters. We have a standard and we live by that standard. It’s just a great opportunity for us to continue what the last two years’ teams have built and we’re in a good spot right now. We’re learning and we’re growing.”
With a few isolated exceptions -- Westlake, the Cedar Park Lady Timberwolves, Liberty Hill’s boys and girls teams, and now Stony Point come to mind – Central Texas has lagged behind other parts of the state in terms of state-level success on the court. Changing that might be one of Thompson’s secondary missions.
“I speak for a lot of coaches; if you compare us to San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, the major cities, we don’t have the (resources and) facilities that gravitate to what successful programs have an opportunity of building. We don’t have access to what great programs throughout the state have accessibility to,” Thompson stated. “So, I’m trying to build that. I’m trying to build resources for individuals that need it.
“Basketball is growing, and Stony Point is a driving factor in that right now and I’m just trying to expand that. And the lack of resources that we have, it kind of negates the ability to grow the game in Round Rock, in Austin and in the Central Texas area.”
With the UIL’s change to the playoff structure dividing all conferences into Division 1 and Division 2 brackets, Stony Point has a decent shot at another deep playoff run, perhaps even returning to the state tournament locked in as a D2 squad. If the Tigers can return, Thompson knows it will help his desire to elevate the visibility of Boys Basketball in Central Texas.
Regardless of what happens on the court, however, Thompson’s favorite part about coaching is obvious: “Relationships and being able to see these young men grow into men and exploring the world and becoming better people than they were when I saw them as young scholar athletes.”
In other words, Thompson knows that what’s more important than bringing a state championship trophy to Stony Point High School is sending exceptional young men out into the community.
That’s his mission.
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