Beauregard High School has an opening for a head softball coach after Lee County Schools Superintendent Dr. Stephen Nowlin decided the school needs a female to run the program.
That decision effectively ends current coach Brandon Cobb’s four-year stint with the team.
Noting that Beauregard currently has no female head coaches, Nowlin said he took the opportunity to change that when a female P.E. teacher retired this year.
“I felt like it was an opportunity to fill that position with a female coach … because we don’t currently have any female coaches at Beauregard High School,” Nowlin said. “I think it’s important to have some.”
Cobb, who will stay at the school and continue as the head coach of the volleyball program while teaching U.S. Government, said he feels like he’s being discriminated against in some fashion.
“I kind of do,” he said. “I guess you would call it reverse discrimination, I don’t really know. But it just doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t seem right, because if it were the other way around it would be wrong — remove a woman because you want a man head coach, so why wouldn’t the reverse be just as wrong?”
Nowlin had a different take.
“I see it as discrimination if we don’t do something like this,” the superintendent said. “I think female coaches need an opportunity and I think girl athletes need some female coaches around.
“That’s just kind of the rationale, is that we need female coaches, too. We need a mixture. We need to have equality in our program for boys and girls in terms of sports that are offered, we need to have equality for them in terms of facilities, and then we need to have males and females among the coaching staff. That’s just what I believe and what I think we legally have to try to do.”
Cobb declined to comment on if he has or will pursue any legal action.
One of Cobb’s former players’ fathers, Danny Cooper, also feels Nowlin’s decision was discriminatory.
“This is not a personnel issue, this is discrimination because he just wants a female head coach,” said Cooper, who’s daughter, Jana, played under Cobb in 2008-09 and earned a scholarship to pitch at Marion Military Institute. “Last time I checked, I live in America and you’re not supposed to judge anybody by their gender, by their religion or by their race.”
Cobb came to Beauregard in 2007 as an assistant coach from Alexandria High School. A year later, he was promoted to head coach. He said he’s had seven players go on to play softball collegiately in the four years he’s been the Hornets head coach.
The Hornets won area championships in his first two seasons, both ending with winning records. The last two years, Beauregard has hovered around the .500 mark.
According to Nowlin, his decision to bring in a female coach had little to do with Cobb’s performance on the softball diamond.
“It’s just a question of if … we had a female P.E. teacher resign and we have an opportunity to hire a female coach, which sport do we do it in?” Nowlin said. “And I felt like softball was the sport that would involve the most girls in the area and is probably the most popular. And even though Coach Cobb has certainly worked hard and is a great guy, it had nothing to do with him, really. It just had something to do with the overall athletic program.”
Cobb said he officially learned of the decision Tuesday.
“Well, it’s kind of a rollercoaster of emotions right now, because I feel like that program — we were down this year, but with fastpitch softball, you’re not going to win many games with one pitcher — but I just felt like I built that program up in the last four years,” Cobb said. “When I first took over, we were having to ask girls to come out and play just so we could fill the JV team. Now we have tryouts and we’re cutting 30 and 40 girls because we’re having so many sign up and try out.
“Our facilities, when I first took over, our facilities there wasn’t much to them. Now if you come out and take a look at them now, what we’ve been able to do through fundraisers, because we haven’t had … we’ve done it all, parents doing different kind of fundraisers to raise money to build the facilities we have now.”
Beauregard principal Richard Brown said he talked to Cobb before the end of the school year to tell him hiring a female coach was a possibility.
Brown and Nowlin both said they had together discussed the need for a female coach.
“We had a conversation for quite a while about the need to have more female coaches at Beauregard High School,” Nowlin said. “And it’s something that if those changes had been made in the past or if we had more gender diversity, it might not be an issue right now. I feel like because we have the opening right now with the P.E. position we can do that now.”
Brown said that coaches aren’t guaranteed the same position every year.
“No coach is assured his position back every year,” Brown said, adding later, “You can move people around. You can reassign them every year. You don’t get tenure as a coach in any position. You can get tenure as a teacher, but that doesn’t mean — you can change coaching assignments any time you want to.”
Cooper and other parents of former and current players are taking their own action with a petition to reinstate Cobb.
Cooper said a group of supporters will be outside of the Dollar General near Beauregard High School either Friday or Saturday for people to sign their petition. There is also one on Facebook that, as of 10 p.m. Thursday, had 19 signatures.
“I’m just a fan of the program,” Cooper said. “I’ve been with it for 15 years. And I’ve seen it go from nothing to where it is by hard work of Coach Cobb and the parents getting together and doing what’s right.”
Nowlin said he’s looking at “the overall needs” of the school.
“We feel it’s more important at the school for the school to have a female coaching staff or females who coach at Beauregard then it is to maintain a particular coach in softball,” Nowlin said.
“We understand that players form attachments to their coaches. And if coaches are changed, some of the players who feel close to the coaches get upset if they think they won’t see them again next year. That’s natural. And that’s kind of the unfortunate side of the coaching changes.
“But if we didn’t make coaching changes ever, then you’d have the same record forever and you couldn’t be trying to get better. But we’re trying to get better in all of our athletic programs at every school.”
Cobb said he still wants to continue at Beauregard as a coach and teacher.
“I’m planning on staying there and doing volleyball,” he said. “I love my job. I love Beauregard.”
