Andre Boutte learned about basketball from three Texas High School Basketball Hall of Famers, each one in a different stage of his basketball life.
“Coach [Fred] Williams taught me the importance of teams playing together, taking a higher-percentage shot, those sorts of things, and getting guys from different backgrounds and bringing them together to form a team,” he said about his Hebert High School mentor.
“Coach [Tommy] Newman taught me more of the fundamental stuff that I know about basketball,” he said about his former University of North Texas coach. “He taught me how to break down a defense, different drills and so forth, different forms of motion offense because we didn’t run a motion offense in high school. Our offense was mostly ball-movement and man-movement, whereas I learned how to play in a motion-set offense from coach Newman.”
Aside from the basketball jargon, Williams and Newman gave Boutte something just as long lasting: Leadership roles on and off the court.
“Andre was always like a coach on the floor,” said Newman, the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches’ first president from 1975-77. “He would have been a great Division I basketball player if he didn’t have the knee injuries. … That helped him become a good coach. He was in on the meetings when he was injured. He was always preparing to be a coach.”
Williams, then a high school principal, hired Boutte straight out of North Texas to coach at Kountze in 1987.
“That doesn’t happen too often,” Boutte said. “He had enough confidence in me to hire me out of college.”
Almost three decades later, Boutte has joined James Gamble, Williams and Newman in the elite fraternity that is the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame. Boutte and seven others were inducted Saturday night at the El Tropicano Hotel in San Antonio.
Gamble, the legendary Lincoln High coach, mentored Boutte during his eight-year run (1989-97) at the forerunner to Port Arthur Memorial, where Boutte is winding down an 8½-year run as athletic director for the Port Arthur ISD.
“Coach Gamble taught me more X’s and O’s and whys and philosophy and mindset,” Boutte said. “The mental aspect of it. He taught me how to bring it to a higher degree and to study your craft. Just the little intricacies of it, like how you take a traditional 2-3 zone and you make little tweaks to it.”
A Beaumont native, Boutte prepped at Hebert, winning state championships under Williams in 1980 and 1981.
“In the town, it’s football growing up,” Boutte said. “That’s what you looked forward to. When coach Williams came over, he kind of sparked our interest in basketball. I love all sports; there’s not one I don’t like. I was in my 10^th-grade year when coach Williams came over, so it was the start of a new program.”
Newman, who recruited Boutte to North Texas (then North Texas State University) in 1983, recently heard a story about his greatness at Hebert from a fellow state tournament competitor.
“Three straight years at the state tournament, Waxahachie was there,” Newman said. “The year after Andre left [Hebert], Waxahachie won. He told me, ‘The reason we were able to win the state championship our senior year was that there was no Andre Boutte to go up against.’”
Boutte graduated from Hebert in 1981 and earned a scholarship to Temple Junior College, where he initially majored in business. But the college’s vice president of the time asked him what he really wanted to do for a career, and Boutte said he wouldn’t mind going into coaching.
“And he kind of led me through that path,” Boutte said.
Boutte played his entire junior season (1983-84) at North Texas but missed all of two games of 1984-85 due to a knee injury for which he underwent three surgeries. He received a medical redshirt and played all of the next season to finish his career.
That’s just his playing background. The coaching career is a little more illustrious.
Lincoln had won back-to-back state championships under Gamble (1988) and Joe Price (1989) before Boutte took the reins after a two-year stay at Kountze. He coached five Lincoln teams to the state final four in Austin, winning the championship in 1991 and 1995.
Ozen High in Beaumont opened in 1997, and Boutte became the Panthers’ first head coach. He won his third and final state championship in 2001 with the help of Kendrick Perkins, who was one of the last NBA draftees out of high school two years later. That team was the first of three straight Panthers squads to make state, along with Boutte’s 2006-07 team.
Boutte left Ozen in the middle of the 2008-09 season to take the job as PAISD athletic director, saying in August 2015 it was “a perfect example” to show the Beaumont ISD that his assistant coaches could carry on Ozen’s winning tradition. Marquis Saveat has been Ozen’s head coach ever since and taken the Panthers to a state title game (runner-up finish to Lancaster in 5A in 2015).
But in September 2015, the PAISD voted 6-1 to dissolve Boutte’s position, effective at the end of this school year. Now, at age 52, Boutte is back in the market for a coaching position, whether it’s on the high school or collegiate level.
He hasn’t considered one position or another as his strongest lead, not even the vacancy at West Brook.
“After the district made a decision that they made, I had to sit back and reassess what I wanted to do,” he said. “I thought I was too young to retire. Because I started so young — this is my 29^th year — I thought I was too young to retire and I have a lot to offer. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to direct young men. I just have to assess that a chapter is closed, but the story isn’t over. I’m not sure at this time where that next opportunity is. I pray all the time and I trust that God is going to put me in a situation that utilizes my talents.”
On Saturday, Boutte’s future might have been the farthest thing from his mind. He, along with 1960s Hawley standout player Judy Beasley, longtime Mission coach Roy Garcia, 34-year veteran Lonnie Gaylor, 800-win coach Carl Owens, six-time state champion coach and 1,000-game winner Cathy Self-Morgan, late Deer and Gruver coach Wayne Tipton and seven-time champ and 1,000-game winner Skip Townsend were feted for storied careers, at least one of which Boutte strongly feels still has a strong future.
“It’s very cool, to be honest with you,” Newman, who closed his career at Euless Trinity in 1998, said of Boutte joining him in the hall. “It sobers you. It ages you.
“He has a good legacy. He was just a natural, the best I can say, as far as being a coach.”

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I.C. Murrell: 721-2435. Twitter: @ICMurrellPANews