By HARVEY SIMPSON
CORDELE — Forced to renew their search for a new head football coach/ athletic director when the man offered the position turned down the job, school officials have renewed their quest for Tommy Walburn’s successor.
Superintendent Jay Brinson said Friday that he and Crisp County High principal Toriano Gilbert are in the process of conducting interviews with candidates who ranked high on their initial list of 60-plus applicants.
“We have conducted interviews with two other applicants (since Baker County, Fla., head coach Bobby Johns nixed the local job offer to stay in the Sunshine State) and may conduct additional ones,” Brinson said.
“When a selection is made and accepted, it will be made public. Hopefully we’ll be able to do that as soon as possible.”
While he would not reveal the identities of the two latest interviewees or other coaches to possibly be interviewed, Brinson said experience as a head coach and athletic director was a criteria used to reduce the number of original applicants.
Some of the original job inquiries were also discarded when they turned out to be no more than letters of interest and did not contain resumes as had been requested on the initial job posting.
“If it wasn’t a serious desire to seek the position by meeting the posted job requirements, we threw them out,” Brinson said.
“Among the rest of the applications we received, there were plenty of good high quality candidates and we’ve now gone back into that group to determine who we want to interview.”
In addition to Johns, who also had been a top three finalist for a similar position at Perry High, Baldwin County’s Jesse Hicks was initially identified as a second finalist for the vacancy created when Walburn resigned in November and later accepted the head football job at Northgate High in Coweta County.
Hicks contacted this newspaper last week to report that he had not been approached since Johns’ refusal to come here.
“I’ve heard reports that I turned down the offer, but that’s not the case,” Hicks said at the time. “I don’t want people there to think I came down and didn’t like the area. I think it’s a good job and that winning can be done there as long as everybody is willing to work together.
“I really hope they find somebody who fits what they’re looking for and who’s willing to help the children as they are the most important part of the program.
”I’m very thankful they had an interest in me and for the opportunity to have come down and interviewed. I wish them good luck in their continued search for the right person to fill the vacancy.”
