Former area star Green named North Myrtle Beach boys hoops coach

Over the course of the last few months, Alvin Green and North Myrtle Beach Athletics Director Joe Quigley spent hours at a time talking basketball.

Green, the former Socastee and Coastal Carolina standout, had joined the school’s staff as an aide in the special education department and was serving as a volunteer assistant at Socastee. Turns out, all those chats were actually a long-running job interview.

On Tuesday, Green was offered and accepted the Chiefs’ boys basketball job.

“It’s funny how it worked out,” Green said. “I always respected him. From day one, we hit it off and started talking about basketball. It’s been a good thing.”

Green replaces Cameron Koehler, who informed the school last week that he was returning to West Virginia for family related issues after two years as the Chiefs’ head coach and a third as an assistant under Frank Moorhead.

Like the last time around, North Myrtle Beach stayed with someone who was already in-house.

Green won South Carolina’s Mr. Basketball honors in 2000 at Socastee before electing to attend CCU over other NCAA Division I offers in both basketball and football. He was named to the Big South all-freshman team during his first season in Conway and went on to serve as a team captain for three years.

After graduating, he spent a year with the U.S. State Department’s Culture Connect Envoy, a program that used basketball as an inroads into other countries. Green took multiple trips with the program, making his way to Africa and Central America, interacting with kids and adults while using the game as a way to open doors.

“I call it the orange pill,” Green said. “It’s allowed me to travel all over the world. I’m just a kid from Socastee.”

Now, he’s also one who will have his first head coaching job after also serving as an assistant at Bridgewater College in Virginia, as well as a one-year stint as a volunteer assistant at Socastee this past season. He joined the teaching staff at North Myrtle Beach last fall, and after Koehler announced he was leaving, Quigley and Principal Trevor Strawderman didn’t waste any time making a move.

“His knowledge of the game is incredible. His passion for the game is incredible,” Quigley said. “His understanding of the game, I don’t know if we would have found anyone else [as good]. I’m sure we would have, but it just fell into our lap.”

Green, who does need to be formally approved for the supplemental position since he is already on staff, takes over a Chiefs program that has had four head coaches in the past six years but has continued to have success throughout. Last season, North Myrtle Beach won the Region VII-AAA championship. Koehler was named the region’s Coach of the Year and senior forward Josh Livingston earned region Player of the Year honors.

The newest North Myrtle Beach coach believes his history on the courts around Horry County helped his chances of landing the job, although his recent past in the coaching ranks – and those conversations with Quigley – are what sealed the deal.

“I think it helps. I think that people remember that I played at Socastee and at Coastal,” Green said. “They kind of remember me from those days. It just puts me in a unique position. It’s obviously something that I’ve been working toward since I started coaching. I’m excited about the opportunity.”

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 10:28 PM with the headline "Former area star Green named North Myrtle Beach boys hoops coach."