By By Steve Swogetinsky / special to The Star
July 9, 2003
LAUREL Former Clarkdale High School head football coach Bubba Hathorn has been named interim head football coach and athletic director at Northeast Jones High School.
The head football coach and athletic director positions are in limbo at this point, pending the outcome of former head coach Randy Martin's appeal. Martin was offered a contract to teach but not coach at Northeast Jones for the upcoming school year. He has appealed that decision. A hearing on the matter started in June, and has been recessed until Aug. 8.
Hathorn has been hired by the Jones County School District as an assistant football coach. Northeast Jones principal Dwain Strickland named him interim head coach.
Hathorn, a native of Jones County, has coached the past two seasons at Clarkdale High School. He led the Clarkdale Bulldogs to the State 2A football playoffs and a district championship last year for the first time in school history.
He met with the Northeast Jones assistant coaches Tuesday, and said he is looking forward to working with them.
He played two seasons at Jones Junior College where he was a member of one state championship team one season and on a runner-up team the next year. He earned his college degree at the University of Southern Mississippi, and then went into coaching.
He started as an assistant for one season at Wayne Academy, and then was head coach for the next two years. He was the head coach at Lamar School in Meridian for one season, and then went back to USM as a graduate assistant for one year.
He returned to Wayne Academy as head coach for the 1992-1995 seasons, then went to Wayne County as defensive coordinator from 1996-2000. He became head coach at Clarkdale before the 2001 season. Hathorn has a 44-42 record as a head coach.
house," Hathorn said. "We have a lot of catching up to do, but I'm looking
forward to the challenge."