New Lexington charter school adds more coaches to inaugural staff lineup
American Leadership Academy has named a state-championship coach and a well-known area basketball standout to its coaching staff.
Sandra Dickert has been named the school’s volleyball and girls basketball coach, while Tyson Bouknight will be the school’s boys basketball coach.
The two join Robin Bacon, who was named the school’s football coach and dean of students earlier this month. The school plans to name more coaches later this week.
American Leadership Academy, which is based out of Arizona and has schools there and in the Carolinas, is a public charter school that will open for the 2023-24 academic year and has been approved to be a member of the S.C. High School League. ALA will begin with at-large membership in Class 2A and then be placed in a region the following year.
Dickert has 36 years of coaching and teaching experience with stops at Gilbert, Irmo and White Knoll.
At Gilbert, she led the Indians to several region championships and runner-up finish for the 1988 season.
Dickert coached at Irmo for 21 seasons and led the Yellow Jackets to back-to-back Class 4A state championships in 1998-99. Irmo won 51 straight matches during that period, which is still second most in state history. The Yellow Jackets also finished state runner-up in 2006.
Dickert was named region coach of the year 13 times and coached in North-South all-star matches four times. At Irmo, Dickert also was an assistant for the Yellow Jackets girls and boys’ basketball teams.
Dickert was volleyball coach at White Knoll from 2016-2022.
Bouknight was a standout at Lexington High School playing for Bailey Harris. He was an all-state selection and played in the North-South All-Star game before going on to USC Aiken.
Bouknight was part of the Wildcats’ 1996 state championship team, which went 26-4.
This will be Bouknight’s first head varsity coaching opportunity. He has spent the last four years as assistant on White Knoll coaching staff. Before that, he was head coach at Pleasant Hill Middle School from 2010-14 and was at Lexington High School from 2014-2019.
