Cedar Park Christian has hired Alan Dickson as its new varsity girls basketball coach.

Dickson, a Cedar Park substitute teacher who has two grandkids at the school, will meet with his players on Friday.

“I just want to have a healthy program, where the kids are having fun and being competitive,” said Dickson, who has coached girls and boys teams for 32 years (he has 255 wins and counting), earned a scholarship to play basketball and football at Butler University in the 1960s and had loads of success with his Monroe High girls team.

A stage-four prostate-cancer survivor, Dickson said he’s ready for this new stage in his coaching life. (“I feel really good, my bloodwork is good, I work out,” said Dickson, noting that he’s on a diet that features natural supplements.)

According to Eagle athletic director Bill Bettinger, Dickson, 66, “has a way of molding a team in such a way that helps the players to succeed.”

Bettinger added that along with Dickson’s vast knowledge of the game and many years of experience, he believes in Cedar Park Christian’s values. “We look for coaches who are ambassadors for Christ. And he will be an ambassador for what we have in our school.”

Added Dickson: “I’m already involved in the Cedar Park community with substituting, and I know the kids. It’s a good fit for me.”

Dickson helmed the Bear Creek School girls varsity squad in Redmond the last two years and helped coach a Cedar Park eighth-grade girls squad in recent years. That Cedar Park team featured some players who are now Eagle juniors in the class 1A ranks. The Eagles qualified for the state tourney last season.

“It was cool to have someone who coached at state (coach them as eighth-graders then),” Bettinger said.

“He’s come back to finish what he started.”

Dickson led his Monroe High girls teams to 4A third-, fifth- and two seventh-place state finishes during his 13-year career there.

At Bear Creek, he led the Grizzlies to second place in the 2B Sea-Tac North Division his first year and then a first-place finish in the division the next year with 15 wins, one victory shy of a state berth.

“(Coaching) kind of gets in your blood and you wanna keep going. I’d like to keep going until I’m 86,” he said with a laugh.

Previous Cedar Park coach Sara Land and her husband, Jeff, are moving to southern California for Jeff’s work.