Some folks have an air about them. They ooze integrity, authority and genuine passion. Their very presence says leadership.

Garth Cone is such a person. When Cone retired in 2005 as an Alexandria High School basketball coaching legend many felt that he had cut the throttle with lots of gas left in the tank. Yes, he had won a state championship, two regionals, five sectionals and 394 games across a 29-year span. But, for those familiar with the Alexandria program and with Cone himself, it seemed that there was unfinished business.

He wasn’t an old man. He was still teaching, and would continue teaching at Alexandria until the end of the 2007-08 school year. And his many fans wondered how he could leave the coaching profession when there were so many more kids to coach, so many more battles to fight.

Last week, the old warrior stepped back into the fray. Cone was named by the Alexandria-Monroe school board to coach the Tiger boys’ basketball team. He will replace his protégé, Mickey Hosier, who played for Cone’s greatest teams (in the mid-1990s) and coached the Tigers the past three seasons.

Hosier, an assistant principal at Alexandria Intermediate School, stepped down because basketball was interfering with his role as a father of four young children (ages 1-7). When Hoosier resigned as coach, he recommended Cone as his successor.

School officials approached Cone, and he said yes.

The new old coach is a strict disciplinarian, a believer in hard work and fundamentals. Cone is also an innovator and especially astute at devising defenses to force the opponent away from its preferences, and at orchestrating offenses to accentuate his team’s strengths. And he’s a fierce competitor, driven — as many successful people are — by a distaste for failure.

“You’re supposed to win,” he said Monday. “I got no real great enjoyment out of winning, but losing ate me up.”

There will be more losses. But the Tigers showed improvement last year and have good young players, meaning that expectations will be high. Rest assured that Cone will arrive at his own expectations and that he’ll push himself and his team hard to succeed.

It’s great to have such an exceptional man back at Alexandria High to coach the sport that captures the imagination of the state unlike any other. When Garth Cone retired from coaching, it was basketball’s loss. Now that he’s back, the sport is all the richer.