Much-Traveled Tim Knight Named Basketball Coach at Highland

PALMDALE — Highland High announced Tuesday it has hired Tim Knight as its basketball coach, the latest and most intriguing move in a flurry of Golden League coaching changes.

The itinerant Knight, 50, has run the gamut of coaching experiences, from professional basketball in Kuwait to high school ball in Ocala, Fla.

He replaces Tom Mahan at Highland. Mahan was recently hired by Antelope Valley to replace Jim Hall, who took the job at Nordhoff last spring.

Interestingly, Knight was set to be an assistant to Quartz Hill’s first-year coach, Bernard Nichter, who took that job when Steve Hurst retired last spring.

“It’s unusual for a coaching opportunity to arise in September,” Knight said. “But I saw an opportunity to build a program.”

Knight has not coached basketball for four years, since he moved to the Antelope Valley in search of affordable housing and got a job at Littlerock High teaching English and coaching the golf team.

“I think it will be fun to get back and do the things I do well--and try to do them even better,” he said.

He was head coach of Kuwait’s Qadsia Club in 1982-83 in the nation’s highest league and won the Kuwait and Arabian Gulf championships. He was a predecessor of former UCLA Coach Larry Farmer at Qadsia Club, which received national media attention during the Persian Gulf War.

Knight also has worked for the basketball coaching association in Korea, was an assistant for U.S. International University and was coach at San Gabriel High.

As a student at Notre Dame, he was football team manager working for Hall of Fame Coach Ara Parseghian.

“For us in the valley to get someone with his credentials is a great thing,” said Paul Arnold, Highland’s vice principal in charge of athletics.

Highland were 15-9 last season, finishing second with a 10-5 league record.

“He’s a class act,” Mahan said. “He’s a real basketball enthusiast. I’ve seen him at clinics the past couple years, sitting in the front row--and he wasn’t even in coaching. He just loves the game.”