Hankins embracing the newness of the 2020 season at Marshall

By Grant Traylor, The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON - When Marshall linebackers coach Jordon Hankins arrived from UT-Martin in January, he knew there would be a big adjustment as he got into Huntington.

Never did he think that his first interviews as a Marshall assistant would come in masks, nor that the first time he'd be on the field with his players would come six months after his arrival.

Such is life for a coach in 2020, however.

The situation for Hankins was a little more difficult, too, because his family wasn't immediately with him during the transition.

Hankins arrived in January, but his wife, Christa, and children, Colt, Casey and Joylee, stayed back in Tennessee until May to finish out the school year.

Football was supposed to be the medicine to get him through that stretch without his family, but that was also taken from him in early March when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

"Two days before spring ball, when I was actually going to be face-to-face with them," Hankins said.

It was one of many challenges facing a coach in a new city in the midst of the most difficult scenario college football has ever seen.

"Especially in the times we're in now, this is new territory for coaches," Hankins said. "It's not new coaches or whatever. This is unknown territory, so how are you attempting to do this? Everybody is trying to find the best way possible through hard times."

Hankins coached at University of Tennessee at Martin for ten years before accepting the Marshall position. He said he consistently calls on former UT-Martin coaching mates Mike Treier and Clinton McMillan - both of whom also spent time at Marshall - to bounce ideas off of them about navigating the unique coaching situation, and perhaps even navigating Huntington.

"It's all been fun," Hankins said with a laugh. "Finding out the differences between streets and avenues in Huntington for the first three weeks here was fun. Everything is a new experience for me."

The experience is new for Hankins, who spent the previous decade at UT-Martin before joining the Herd staff at the start of 2020.

Hankins decided that within the unique landscape of college football as it is right now and the situation with new faces and new surroundings, there was only one thing he could do: embrace the differences.

That's the message he's passing on to the players within his room during camp.

"When you're building relationships, just be open and honest," Hankins said. "I didn't know anything about these guys. I didn't recruit them. I told them, 'Guys, I watched your highlight film. I didn't recruit you and I'm not going to sit here and say I did. At the same time, you didn't hire me here, so we're going to make this work as what's best for Marshall.' That's our idea every day we come in."

That honesty has endeared him to many players within his position room who are going through the same thing he is: being new to a city and getting acclimated to a new team.

Marshall's experience at the linebacker spot is limited to senior Tavante Beckett, whose first year came in 2019, and Domenick Murphy, a former walk-on who has earned his way.

However, the majority of the guys within the room are new to Huntington. Abraham Beauplan, Charlie Gray and Brian Cavicante are all guys who arrived via transfer at the same time Hankins did.

They, too, expected to get on the field for spring ball and adjust accordingly.

Instead, learning and familiarity has come from afar through technology.

"A lot of Zoom meetings," Hankins laughed. "We were gone from March until we got back (in June), and then a lot of in-face meetings, which we've had a lot of time now so you can start seeing it mold together a little bit more. That's the neat thing right now, but it was a lot of extra effort for sure."

That familiarity is vital for Hankins, who has two young boys who are all about sports.

Hankins wants people within his room that his kids can consider family and players his kids can look up to.

"If you're not working somewhere that you feel you can get your family around the players, you don't need to be working there," Hankins said. "It's big because I've got two boys - 10 and 8 years old - and they live sports. ... We got a house here and they didn't want to see the house first. They wanted to come see the stadium. That was the first thing they wanted to see when they got to Huntington."

Marshall will be playing Eastern Kentucky at noon Saturday, September 5 on ESPN.

Jordon is the son of Tracy and Randy Hankins of Hohenwald and his wife, Emily, is the daughter of Tim Webb and the late Melanie Webb, formerly of Hohenwald.