By Maurice Patton
After seven years as a teacher, coach and/or athletics director at Columbia Central, Kevin Creech is accustomed to resuming work following the TSSAA-mandated dead period.
However, instead of returning to those duties on July 12, Creech confirmed Tuesday he has accepted a position as a field sales representative with BSN Sports.
“It was an opportunity that presented itself that I felt was the right time, and I couldn’t pass it up,” said Creech, who shared AD responsibilities with Ray Wilson following Vance Belew’s resignation in 2019. “It’s an opportunity, financially, to grow, and do something different.”
It’s a development that Kevin Eady – set to officially assume the Central principal position on Thursday, after his hiring in early June to succeed Roger White – did not expect, on top of a series of other coaching and administrative vacancies at the school.
“We had a scheduled meeting, and at that time he informed me of his plans to resign,” Eady said. “He explained it wasn’t because of anything I’d done or any situation that was going on. It was an opportunity he’d been looking at and it came to fruition and he took it. I can’t hold that against any man.
“With football season getting ready to start, with school starting, with some of the hires we need to make, it creates a higher sense of urgency. But, he had done a lot of things preparing for the upcoming year. We just need to finalize a lot of things he’d done and go from there.”
Creech previously spent five years as softball coach at Central, after coaching collegiately at Ole Miss and at Tennessee-Martin, his alma mater.
As the just-completed school year wound down, Creech said he put out some feelers and got a response.
“I started looking because it’s a healthy thing to look,” he said. “With school, you never want to leave in the middle (of the year). So usually in the spring, if you’re going to look, you start looking in the spring.
“There was a job opening, I applied, through some connections, they said, we don’t have this anymore, but we’ve got something else. That’s how it all kinda worked out.”
Indications are that Wilson will continue to handle AD duties while an internal search for Creech’s replacement is conducted by Eady. Both the girls basketball and softball coaching positions remain vacant, along with a pair of assistant principal positions; Lee Thomason has been reassigned to Whitthorne Middle School as an assistant principal, while Tammy Riley Robertson has retired.
“Officially, I can start working on that starting Thursday, finalizing those positions,” Eady said regarding the coaching searches. “Some legwork has been done, but nothing can be done until I come on board officially.
“I’m looking at a pretty quick timetable. Once we do interviews, we can turn really quickly. I’m hoping to be done with most of it by the end of next week.”