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Prep Football: Mercer starts search for new coach

June 03, 2009|LARRY VAUGHT

HARRODSBURG - Mercer County officials are formulating a plan to search for a new football coach after Monday's resignation by Marty Jaggers.

"We were still anticipating he would be teaching and coaching next year," Mercer principal Terry Yates said Tuesday. "We have only briefly discussed our options. We will advertise through newspapers, the KHSAA (Kentucky High School Athletics Association) and the state (department of education) has a vacancy board we will put it on."

Yates planned to start those procedures Tuesday in hopes of getting the position filled as quickly as possible.

Mercer athletics director Todd Davis knows replacing Jaggers, who won 36 games in four years at Mercer and led the Titans to the 2006 Class AA championship, will not be easy, especially at this time of year.

"It's very difficult now to go find a coach. They are already getting ready for the season. They have gone through spring practice. It's a lot more difficult at this time of year to find a coach than if you were searching earlier in the year," Davis said.

"But I also know it's hard to replace any successful head coach no matter what the situation is. When you are talking about somebody that runs a program for 70 to 100 kids, it's always going to be hard to replace somebody like that."

Davis said Bill Mason, Mercer's assistant head coach/defensive coordinator, will oversee the program until a new coach is hired.

Both Yates and Davis emphasized they want to hire a football coach who will also be a full-time teacher at the high school. Mercer currently has only one head coach of a major sport teaching at the high school.

Jaggers wanted to retire from teaching and continue coaching, something Mercer officials would not let him do.

"Coaches are great role models for their athletes, but there are also a lot of opportunities for them to do that for a lot of other kids on a daily basis," Yates said. "We want a coach that will be in the building all day."

Davis did acknowledge that other school systems have elected to allow successful coaches to retire from teaching and continue coaching and that there could be times when that allows a head coach to interact with students even more.

"There's always a possibility that could be true, but our administration just felt like we needed to get back to having coaches in the building," Davis said.

"We have a few teaching positions available right now, and we will be deciding in the next few days exactly what direction we will go with the coaching search."

Yates said he was disappointed that Jaggers did not talk directly to him when he resigned Monday.

"Marty has known for a while that we wanted him to teach and coach. He indicated to me last week that he was still undecided and did ask if I was OK with him retiring and remaining as coach," Yates said.

"I felt we need to get more head coaches in the building. We needed him in the science department and where he could be a daily influence on a lot of kids. He wasn't sure if wanted to do that. There's no question about the caliber of his coaching. I just wish he had come in and told me directly what he was going to do."

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