Dr. Fred Rayfield, superintendent of the Decatur County Schools, said Friday that the system has already received “at least 25” applications for its open position of Bainbridge High School head football coach.
Former head football coach Ed Pilcher resigned from his position last Friday, Jan. 25, and the system began advertising the opening Monday, Jan. 28. Rayfield said that the application deadline is Monday, Feb. 11.
After the application deadline has passed, a committee will then review each application and rank its top candidates. Those candidates will be invited to interview with the committee, who will then make a recommendation to Rayfield with their top finalist or finalists.
Rayfield said that the entire committee has not yet been formed, but he knows that some of the members will include BHS principal Tommie Howell, BHS athletic director Stan Killough and Dr. Linda Lumpkin, assistant superintendent for human resources for the Decatur County Schools. Other committee members will likely include school faculty and community representatives.
Rayfield said he would instruct the committee on how to conduct the process of narrowing down the applications and determining which candidates to interview. However, after that initial orientation session he would then “let them do their job.”
“There’s no need to have a committee like this if you’re not going to let them be free to do their job,” he said. “The only thing that I will do is orient them to the process and say, ‘This is how we’d like to have it done,’ and then I’ll get out of the way.”
Rayfield said that he hopes the committee will be able to reach a consensus on who the top candidate should be. He will then interview that candidate face-to-face to confirm the committee’s recommendation. However, if the committee cannot come to a consensus and ends up naming two or three finalists, he will interview all of them.
“My interview would only be to verify and confirm that this is the direction we want to go,” he said. “I’ll just be asking a few additional questions on top of the questions the committee has already asked.”
Assuming that Rayfield is satisfied with the committee’s top pick, he would then recommend that coach to the Decatur County Board of Education during the next scheduled meeting. Rayfield said that he hopes a recommendation will be ready by the March school board meeting, which is scheduled for Thursday, March 21.
“I’d say that if we had a target date, that would be the one,” he said. “There are certainly a ton of factors that could influence whether we can make that date, but that would be my ideal target day.”