Vincentian Kishon Bishop, a Triad basketball businessman, has been named head coach of North Carolina’s Atkins High School Boys’ Basketball team.
Bishop, a former Piedmont International University (now Carolina University) player, has operated the Blue Chip Basketball Academy and the non-profit Hope & Hope, Inc. since 2012, and has been a co-owner of the Winston-Salem Wolves professional basketball team since 2018. The Triad High School All-Star Classic, as well as the Triad High School Fall and Summer Leagues, are also covered by the Blue Chip Basketball umbrella.
Bishop’s only previous head high school basketball coaching post was as Caldwell’s boys coach in 2014-15.
Bishop worked as an assistant under Rusty LaRue at West Forsyth from 2015 to 2018, and the Titans went 52-30 in three seasons. It went 27-3, 11-1 in conference, and reached the NCHSAA 4A regional semifinals in 2016-17.
Bishop’s strong understanding of the game pleased Atkins sports director Leslie Long, who identified skills in him that extended beyond the game. The recommendations from LaRue and West were also remarkable.
“Obviously, what we are hiring someone to do is coach basketball, but we also need a good person, and we need someone who is in it for the kids,” Long explained. “We love to win, but we also need someone to help the kids and the program grow and things like that.” Don’t get me wrong: we want to win, but we also want these kids to be able to return to Atkins and have a positive relationship with Coach Bishop. He has a lot of contacts and can assist them get to college and then on to their professions and other things.”
Bishop stated that his main goal is not to win games, but to use the sport as a tool. At Piedmont, he is a theology major with a youth emphasis who sees coaching as a mission. He cited Freddy Johnson, the boys coach at Greensboro Day and the state’s winningest high school basketball coach, as a big coaching influence.
“The first thing I want to do is create a sense of community within the school,” Bishop said. “We are first and foremost an academic and technological school, which is one of the things that drew me to this position.” We are not a’sports school,’ but sports are an extra-curricular activity that can enrich the lives of our students. So having outstanding student-athletes will be critical.”
Bishop has degrees in health and physical education from Piedmont and High Point Universities.
