NAMPA, Idaho – May 3 will always be a special day for Jon Hawkins and his family.

No, it's not the day he was married or the day he bought a house or won a championship.

Instead, it is the day the Northwest Nazarene assistant men's basketball coach found out his wife, Savanah, was pregnant with their first child, Callahan.

One year later on the same day, Hawkins was offered the full-time assistant job with the Nighthawks.

"If Paul (Rush) hadn't offered me that position I don't know what I would have done," Hawkins said.

Hawkins was recently named a Silver Wave's Media 50 Impactful NCAA Division II Assistant Coach.

"He's one of the best assistant coaches I've ever had," said Kobe Terashima, who transferred to NNU from Montana State Billings and red-shirted last season. "He pays really close attention to detail and doesn't let little stuff slide. If you are doing something wrong, he'll work with you to fix it. He also really cares about you and actually shows that he cares. I really like that a lot."

Hawkins, who was hired as a part-time assistant under then head-coach Scott Flemming in 2015, spent four years working from sunup to sundown just to make his family's finances work.

With his wife attending graduate school to become a physician's assistant, Hawkins did a variety of jobs with the CCH Group. He was a customer service rep, taking orders, packaging orders and managing inventory. He donated plasma. He took care of a farm for a summer, spending hours repainting fence posts. He stacked pallets of vinegar. He and his wife spent nights and weekends sorting bottle caps and doing other work to make side money.

"I would go from job to job to some sort of odd job in the evening," he said. "Even if it was during the season, I'd go from odd job to NNU to another job to working on scouting reports and so on."

All that hard work appeared to pay off with a full-time assistant coaching job offer in Texas.

As Hawkins was getting ready to accept, he and his wife found out they were pregnant with their son, which was a bit of a surprise.

They decided there wasn't enough of a support system in Texas so they remained in Nampa.

Hawkins toiled another year juggling his many different trades, and just when he was thinking about going to work for the railroad, head coach Paul Rush offered him his dream job.

"When I had the opportunity to promote Jon into the head assistant position, I knew he was going to make our program better," Rush said. "I didn't hesitate. He is a tireless worker in recruiting and building relationships. He also embodies what our program is about in terms of our No. 1 job to love each other."

The thing Hawkins valued most about moving up to full-time assistant wasn't just the financial stability, but the time he gained. Time to spend with his wife, his son and his players.

"I get to focus on the relationship aspect with the players," he said. "I felt like when I was part time, when I was in the office I had to get stuff done. I didn't have extra time outside of basketball to spend with the players.

"Now, I'm able to go to lunch with guys or coffee or get an extra workout in."

That relatability is one reason Hawkins is considered a rising star in the coaching world.

"When he moved up the thing he was most excited about was investing time and energy into the players," Rush said. "He is a very relational coach who works very hard connecting with our players, challenging our players, making our players better and building lasting meaningful relationships.

"He could take over a program right now and do a tremendous job as a head coach. My goal is to keep him at NNU as long as possible."

Hawkins graduated from NNU in 2013 with a degree in youth ministry. He didn't know what he wanted to do necessarily, but knew he wanted to work with young people. He played two years for the Nighthawks, leading the country in free throw percentage as a senior. After playing professionally overseas for two years, he decided to get into coaching.

The rest, as they say, is history.

"He has the experience as a college athlete and that helps him connect on a lot of levels," Savanah Hawkins said of what makes her husband successful. "And he is so passionate about it. This is his calling in life. This is how he is going to pursue ministry in life.

"He's going to get on the same level of these young athletes and mentor them and teach them to grow in more than just basketball – to help them grow into young men with integrity and compassion."