(Story has been updated)
With Brad Jackson having left for the athletic director’s job at Ooltewah, East Hamilton principal Gail Chuy has taken on the AD duties for Hurricanes athletics.
Chuy, however, is convinced that her AD tenure will be short-lived.
“I’m going to be helping our new guy learn about high school athletics,” Chuy said Friday. “I’m the contact person for athletics right now, but I’m hopeful I can turn over the duties to the new guy in two to four weeks after we return to school.”
The “new guy” is Matt Thurman, who arrives at East Hamilton as an assistant principal for a school with grades 6-12 and will in time oversee high school and middle school athletics that fall under the same umbrella.
For the past four years, Thurman served as assistant principal at Normal Park Museum Magnet School.
“I didn’t know who I’d get to do the job at first,” Chuy said. “It took me a while to get my assignments. When Matthew came to us he still had to fulfill obligations at Normal Park. Since then we’ve talked and I feel comfortable in helping him make the transition to become our athletic director.”
Chuy also discussed the job with Eddie Gravitte, also an assistant principal, but decided he had too much to handle with the school’s testing, scheduling and other administrative duties to take on the AD’s job.
Did she consider any other people, especially veteran coaches already on staff, for the job?
“I really think an administrator should be the AD,” Chuy said. “When I was at Red Bank we had coaches doing it, and that’s fine. If that guy is the football coach, or whatever, it lends itself to favoritism, not that they do show that, but it’s always one of the arguments.”
While Jackson served as athletic director at East Hamilton, he was also one of the school’s assistant principals. He will handle the same dual duties at Ooltewah.
“Brad is talented, efficient and knowledgeable and has been around sports for a long time,” Chuy said. “He’s been a coach. He was invaluable to me. I’ve been around sports all my life. My husband (John Chuy) coached at Bradley Central. I don’t necessarily want to be the AD and I think it will take two or three weeks, maybe a month, to have Matthew ready to do the job.”
Jackson was assigned to Ooltewah in May when the Hamilton County Department of Education announced 2016-17 appointments. In that same announcement, Jim Jarvis, who had been the principal at Ooltewah for years, was assigned to East Hamilton as an assistant principal.
On July 7, Jarvis announced he would take a leave of absence.
Thurman, 34, grew up in Cleveland and attended Bradley Central High School. His teaching and coaching career started at Red Bank middle school in 2000 and he stayed there – he coached football, basketball, soccer and track – until 2011.
He was an upper school assistant principal at Normal Park Museum Magnet School until May when he was assigned to Brown Academy. However, before being phased in at Brown, Thurman instead was placed at East Hamilton.
“Officially, those (assignments) don’t really happen until early July,” Thurman said. “For me, I needed to finish up student scheduling at Normal Park before I moved on, and that can take up to three weeks.
“In fact, on Thursday I was texting and talking on the phone to the Normal Park principal to make sure my transition from Normal Park had gone smoothly.”
For a time Chuy was unsure where her search for a new AD would lead, but finally decided that Thurman is right for the job.
“She mentioned another guy (Gravitte) or me possibly getting the job,” said Thurman, who recently moved from Hixson to East Brainerd. “I believe she used my background as a coach as an area of expertise.”
Several people at Ooltewah were caught up in scandal when a freshman boys’ varsity basketball player was raped with a pool cue by three teammates in December 2015 in Gatlinburg during a pre-Christmas tournament.
Assistant principal and athletic director Jesse Nayadley, boys’ head basketball coach Andre “Tank” Montgomery and volunteer assistant coach Karl Williams were caught up in the case.
Nayadley, Montgomery and Williams were each charged with a failure to report the incident to the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and suspended.
In May, Nayadley, who was formerly the Owls’ boys head basketball coach, accepted a pre-trial diversion in Hamilton Criminal Court, admitting no wrongdoing, and has resigned from the school district.
Charges were dismissed against Williams.
Montgomery has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is the only person still facing criminal charges.
Ooltewah principal Jim Jarvis finished the 2016-17 school year, but in May was reassigned to East Hamilton as an assistant principal. On July 7, Jarvis announced he was taking a leave of absence. He was replaced at Ooltewah by Robin Copp, who was formerly the principal at Signal Mountain.
Donnie Mullins was the Owls’ interim AD after Nayadley’s suspension and is now dean of students.
Jackson was named East Hamilton’s athletic director in July 2010 and before that he was the head wrestling coach at East Ridge High School for 17 years. He also served as the middle school head football coach and coached wrestling at Tyner from 1989-93.
Jackson’s experience in the Marines will probably be a great asset, considering the tumult Ooltewah went through in the previous school year.
“Any time you go into a tough situation, you might have some reservations,” Jackson said. “I told everyone when I got this job that I was honored they picked me out of a lot of good people in the system. It’s going to be tough and I think we’re going to have a great administrative team.
“We’ve inherited some problems, but we’ll work through them and we’re going do our best to do things the right way."
As the new athletic director, Jackson, who has been on the job since July 5, faces two major decisions coming up in the near future.
He, along with Copp, must hire new boys’ basketball and wrestling coaches and clearly restarting the boys' hoops program and putting a new coach in place is his No. 1 priority.
“The timing for us to find quality coaches with character is made tougher because of the timing,” Jackson said. “A lot of coaches already have jobs for the coming school year. We’ve got a bunch of student-athletes excited about who will coach them and at the same time have anxiety about who that coach will be. I understand that.
“I’ve been having some individual meetings with coaches and their staff people in the last couple of weeks and those folks have been wonderful and are making my transition much smoother. We’re all going to work hard to make things right here.
“The community needs it and the students and athletes deserve it.”
(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and follow on Twitter @larryfleming44)