City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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It’s been a minute since John Cox IV was involved with high school basketball. 

The son of Philly native and former NBA player John ‘Chubby’ Cox III, Cox IV went right from a standout career at San Francisco into a 14-year overseas career, starting a family and becoming a standout in some of the top leagues in Europe. He joined the La Salle coaching staff almost immediately upon retirement, first in operations under Ashley Howard and then staying on as an assistant under Fran Dunphy. 

That means that outside of his recruiting visits as an assistant coach at La Salle University, it’s been more than a quarter-century — since his graduation from Engineering & Sciences in 1999 — that the new Germantown Academy boys’ coach was in the prep ranks.

Cox was announced as GA’s new varsity coach at the end of May, a new chapter for both coach and program. He will also serve as an associate athletic director at the Fort Washington institution, one of the area’s oldest private schools. 

“I’m really appreciative of the opportunity, and GA has welcomed me and believes in me to do it,” Cox told CoBL by phone. “I’m going to try to treat it similar to coaching in college [...] even though the age demographic is slightly lower, the kids want that, they want to play at the next level, so just trying to prepare them for that now and giving tem that college look and training and practice setting, I think that’s going to be my approach.”

Cox — who was born in Caracas, Venezuela as it was where his father was playing at the time — was a standout at E&S and then went to play at the University of San Francisco, averaging 20 points per game as a senior in 2004-05 as the Dons made it to the NIT. A 6-foot-5 guard, he then played 14 seasons overseas, spending most of his career playing in the French LNB Pro A, one of the top leagues in Europe, along with spots in Germany and Venezuela. 

He married his wife, Mary, in 2007; the two have three children: daughters Skylar (11) Zoe (10) and son John Cox V, known mainly as ‘Five.’ (“If you call him ‘John,’ he won’t turn around,” Cox quipped.). His daughters were born overseas, moved around from school to school as they went through their early years, going from France to Germany and back to France before returning to the United States. 

That experience is a major reason why Cox IV wanted to stay in the Philadelphia area following the end of his tenure at La Salle. 

“I was looking at different places around the country, but it’s different when you have kids,” he said. “To bounce [schools] again was a little tough on them so it shifted my brain a little bit with an opportunity like this and I want to be a head coach, I want to do it, it feels good to be able to get a program and I’m trying to build and rebuild and my family also can stay in the same place, they were probably the biggest factor for me trying to stay around, honestly.”

Cox retired from playing in 2019, the same year that legendary GA head coach Jim Fenerty retired after a 30-year run as the Patriots’ boss. Fenerty, who passed two years later, won more than 600 games on the GA sidelines, including 17 Inter-Ac championships, the last of which was a split crown in 2016-17. 

The Patriots have struggled to stay relevant since the end of the Fenerty era. Penn Charter went unbeaten to capture the league title this year; GA finished at the bottom of the pack the last two years and in fifth the year before that. Every other program in the league — SCH Academy, Malvern Prep, Episcopal Academy and the Haverford School — has been competitive in that span. 

Many of GA’s best players the last few years have been multi-sport athletes. Others, like Bryce Rollerson (ANC) and Bryce Presley (Roman Catholic), have transferred out. Cox will have to develop the Patriots’ youth programs and middle school teams and generally attract more talent if he wants to get the Patriots back to the days of Alvin Williams, Matt Walsh, Nick Lindner, Julian Moore and more. 

“I just want to do right and get back to what it was with Coach Fenerty,” Cox said. “It’s going to take some hard work and I think the name [helps]. A lot of people want to be part of this tradition, not just for athletics but academics, and finding the right kids who want to be in the GA community is important. Right now is a good time and the league has produced not just D-I athletes but high-major D-I athletes.”

While Cox is still building out his staff, he did make an important first addition in former Wood assistant Pat Haggery. Haggerty, who helps run the Philly Revolution grassroots program, has been a Vikings assistant for more than a decade and knows the area’s high school scene well thanks to his work in both high school and AAU circles. 

“The biggest thing I wanted to do first was have a good assistant that’s working with me, that’s been on this level and knows the landscape really well,” Cox said. “I still have to build a staff but one guy who was pivotal and a major piece is Pat Haggerty.”

Cox will have to work quickly to get his team ready for some competition. The Patriots will play in the Mid-Atlantic Independent School Showcase at the end of this month, two weekends of competition at Executive Education in Allentown during the live periods, with Division I coaches in the gym. 

“It’s going to be a little different for me just because I’m trying to grasp and get a sense for what I have right now, I haven’t gotten a great chance to see everyone,” Cox said. “I have an idea of what we want to do offensively and defensively but you’ve got to adjust to what you have. We’re going to be figuring ourselves out a little bit and how we’re going to play for the winter.”