Von Mixon was a 5-foot-7, 130-pound wide receiver who played in a Wing-T offense at Vicksburg High School. He had no college offers when he graduated and walked on to Hinds Community College’s football team at the very last minute.

Every practice was a battle to prove himself. Every day provided moments where he could have walked away with no one thinking less of him. All of it only made him more determined.

“They were bigger, taller, even faster than me,” Mixon said. “But they weren’t going to outwork me. Once you work, everything starts to feel a little bit easier.”

When it all came together for Mixon, there weren’t many better. He excelled at Hinds, then went on to Division II Arkansas-Monticello and set a school record that stands 20 years later. No one overlooked him then, and they’re not now.

Mixon was recently elected to the University of Arkansas-Monticello Sports Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025. He’ll be inducted at a ceremony in early October. It’s an achievement that he calls humbling.

“It feels great. I’m so honored. To God be the glory,” Mixon said. “I graduated high school and was 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, and when I ended my football career I was 5-9 and 175. It was God that helped me and I give Him the glory. I’m so happy and very humbled.”

BUILT IN THE ‘BURG
Mixon grew up on Oak Street in Vicksburg, in what he described as a neighborhood loaded with outstanding athletes. His neighbor, Catrina Frierson, played in the WNBA. Backyard football games were a near-daily activity.

Later on, the same sense of community helped him excel as a college player. Led by former Hinds assistant coach Jim McGowan, Mixon was part of a group of more than 20 high school and college players who regularly gathered to run the hills at Warren Central Junior High to stay in shape during summer.

“Growing up on Oak Street, it was about 15 of us playing every day. Iron sharpening iron. A lot of us would play up and down the street,” Mixon said.

By the time the boys got to Vicksburg High School, they formed the corps of an outstanding football team. The 2001 Gators finished 10-4 and reached the MHSAA Class 5A semifinals.

Mixon admits he was only a small part of it. The Gators of that era had a run-heavy offense led by a pair of bruising backs in Phelan Gray and J.J. Brown who combined for more than 4,000 rushing yards over three seasons.

Mixon was easy to overlook, and it had nothing to do with his height.

“At Vicksburg we had a Wing-T offense. We didn’t throw the ball much. My best game my senior year was like five catches for 55 yards against Clinton,” he said.

Even if he didn’t have the size and opportunity to become an immediate star, Mixon utilized the assets he did have — quickness, speed, strength, and an unrelenting work ethic. He ran a 4.4-second 40-yard dash.

He refused to let anyone convince him the negatives outweighed the positives. The one time he did, someone was quick to set him straight.

“I quit football for about a day. When I was going into my 10th grade year there was a coach who said, ‘You’re too small! Those guys are going to smash you!’” Mixon said. “I was a trainer for that one day and I saw Coach (Bobby) Huell. He was outside smoking a cigarette and asked me what was wrong. I said I want to play football and he said, ‘Boy, you better go get your equipment and come on back down there! You’re good enough to play.’ He kept me going. That was a person who believed in me.”

Mixon turned that belief into an outstanding athletic career at VHS. He won the MHSAA Class 5A powerlifting championship in the 123-pound weight class in 2000 and also ran track in addition to playing football.

He wound up with a walk-on offer at Hinds that didn’t come until just before practice started in July. Hinds was a football powerhouse at the time and the MACJC had a well-deserved reputation as the top junior college football conference in the country. The league was loaded with Division I talent and, when Mixon arrived for his first practice, he was determined to do what he’d always done.

“When I got to Hinds and ran down the hill to the practice field and saw everybody my eyes lit up,” he said. “But there was a little burning in me like, ‘I can do this.’ There wasn’t a fear there.”

A BIG BREAKOUT
It didn’t take long for Mixon to make an impression at Hinds. In his first game he caught five passes for 88 yards and a touchdown as the Eagles beat top-ranked Northwest Mississippi 28-24.

Mixon bulked up to 170 pounds and did well enough at Hinds — 63 receptions for 750 yards in two seasons — to earn a scholarship to Arkansas-Monticello, although even that did not come easily.

He was also being recruited by Grambling and wanted to go there, but that school did not have any scholarship money available. So he wound up at UAM instead, in a pass-happy offense with an outstanding quarterback and a good friend with former VHS teammate Chris Humes.

Like at Hinds, Mixon had an outstanding debut. He and Humes both surpassed the 100-yard receiving mark in a 46-32 loss to FCS member Southeastern Louisiana in the second game of the 2004 season.

Unfortunately, Humes tore his ACL the following week and missed the rest of the season. Mixon, determined to play for his injured friend, quickly found another gear. He had 100 yards or more in the Boll Weevils’ last seven games, along with nine touchdowns covering 20 yards or more.

“Chris Humes made my college career at Monticello,” Mixon said, “We played Southeastern Louisiana and Chris had about 114 yards receiving and I had 113. The next game he tore his ACL. I said I’m going to play this season for Chris. That’s where it started.”

Mixon calls himself a “numbers guy” who is able to rattle off his high school and college stats with ease. As the big games piled up in that 2004 season, he said he started keeping a close eye on the record books.

In the final game of the season, needing 105 yards to set Arkansas-Monticello’s single-season record, he racked up 10 catches for 171 yards and two touchdowns against Delta State. Including kickoff returns, he had 287 total yards in the game.

The outstanding finale gave Mixon a total of 66 receptions for 1,245 yards and 12 TDs for the season. He surpassed the school’s season record of 1,200 yards that Derick Armstrong had set four years earlier. Armstrong played three seasons in the NFL with the Houston Texans.

Including returns, Mixon led the Gulf South Conference with 168.1 total yards per game in 2004.

“I didn’t go to Monticello thinking I would break a record or be in the Hall of Fame. I just came in there thinking my mom isn’t going to have to pay for school and I’m going to walk out of there with a degree,” Mixon said. “But when everything started going and I was in a zone that year, and I can reach it, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I can go and get this record.’ That’s when I really started going at it and counting numbers.”

Two decades later, the yardage mark is still standing and Mixon is still counting numbers whenever someone gets close to his totals. Even with the proliferation of pass-oriented offenses since 2004, no one has reached them.

“It’s been 20 years for that record. That offense was pretty wide open. We were five-wide. It was almost before its time,” Mixon said. “After 20 years a few guys came kind of close. I’m always looking to see what they’re doing.”

A LASTING LEGACY
Mixon was selected as a first-team All-Gulf South Conference selection, and a D2Football.com All-American for his stellar 2004 season, among several other accolades.

Unfortunately, a hamstring injury kept him from duplicating it. It affected him throughout the 2005 season and he only wound up with 34 receptions for 437 yards and two touchdowns. He played through the pain and still led the team, but it was far from his record-setting campaign the year before.

Mixon said some NFL teams showed interest in him as a late-round draft pick or undrafted free agent, and the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos offered a contract as well. The hamstring injury had stolen his speed and burst, though, and he said he knew that his playing career was over.

“Even to this day when it gets a little cool I have to stretch it,” Mixon said of his hamstring. “I never got back to it. I’m fulfilled because I worked hard. I don’t go back to ‘if this’ and ‘if that.’”

Mixon eventually settled in Houston, Texas, and has worked the past eight years as a locomotive engineer for Union Pacific Railroad. He has three children, including a 6-year-old who is excelling as a flag football player.

Even if he’s at peace with his football career, Mixon has not been forgotten at Arkansas-Monticello. He was first nominated as a candidate for the university’s Sports Hall of Fame a few years ago, but for various reasons it took until now to be elected.

Mixon was announced as one of five members of the Class of 2025 in early June. They’ll officially be inducted on Oct. 2, and also honored at the Boll Weevils’ game vs. Southern Nazarene on Oct. 4.

After playing with and against so many great players both in Vicksburg and in the Gulf South Conference, Mixon said he was proud to be among the elite of the elite as a hall of famer.

“Vicksburg and Warren County in general, we have NFL players. We have hundreds of great football players. It’s not too many that can say they are All-Americans or in the sports hall of fame at their respective university,” he said. “That is big to me. That humbles me.”

He added that the enormity of the achievement isn’t lost on him. His yardage record will eventually fall one day and he’ll fade into football history. Being a hall of famer, though, is something that will last forever.

“The Gulf South Conference was the SEC of D-II back then. And me being first-team All-GSC in that conference, this is something that can live on. That my kids can look at and say look at his name. It’s something that they can strive for,” Mixon said. “It’s very humbling and makes me feel good. It’s from that hard work. Nobody can take that away from me.”

It’s that last part — hard work — that Mixon seemed most proud of. Throughout his football career he had to overcome plenty of adversity whether it was size, lack of opportunities, or people telling him he couldn’t do it.

Each time, Mixon worked harder to overcome it until he was the best. It’s a lesson he teaches his children and encourages everyone else to learn as well.

“I was always one of the two smallest on the team. I was always dedicated. You had to be dedicated to the sport if you were going to play it, because you’re not going to be motivated to get up every morning. That’s with everything in life,” he said. “One thing I did know growing up is control the things you can control and pray. I know I’m going to be the smallest one on the team, but I’m going to have to be the fastest and quickest on the team because I can control that. I can’t control my height. But I can control everything else.”