Pearl River County School District makes hiring of Head Coach Jacob Owen official
The Pearl River County School District made it official last night at a special called board meeting when they approved the hiring of Jacob Owen as their Head Coach for football.
Superintendent Alan Lumpkin, who made the announcement of Owen’s selection last week pending board approval, was quite pleased with the hiring become official.
“In my opinion, we made a home run hire for the Blue Devil family and we’re just so excited to have him back. His record speaks for itself as an offensive coordinator,” Lumpkin said. “He was a part of a lot of success at New Hope with Coach Michael Bradley (former Pearl River Central head coach) and with Coach Jay Beech at Poplarville the past few years. I can’t wait for August. I’m ready for some football.”
Owen is a 2001 graduate of Pearl River Central High School and told how he starting his coaching career at Pearl River Community College while he was still a student.
“I signed with Pearl River right over there in that library along with Justin Herring and Sammy Hayes. I got redshirted and after my first year there, I realized I had taken football as far as I could. Our coach, Scott Maxfield, asked me what I wanted to do for a living and I told him I wanted to be a football coach. He said okay, I’ll give you your first job. He asked me if I wanted to coach quarterbacks and I said absolutely. He handed me a book that listed every high school in the state of Florida. I was 19 years old and he told me to call every high school in this book and find out if they have any players that are good enough to play college football, but are academically ineligible, and compile a list of them. I called every school from American to Zephyr Hills high school.”
The board also made another hire official by approving Austin Alexander to the position of Principal for the PRC Middle School (PRCMS) for the 2018-2019 school year. Alexander, who is currently the assistant principal at Forrest County AHS in Brooklyn, is no stranger to the school district.
“Austin was the assistant principal at our middle school four years ago and we’re super excited to have him back here. Our middle school is a high performing school and we expect he will take it and continued with the success there,” Lumpkin stated on the hire.
The board also approved adding Vol White as assistant school test coordinator for the PRC Upper Elementary school for the 2017-2018 school year
