J.D. Dunbar had been promoted to head wrestling coach at Ooltewah High School.
Dunbar, an assistant with the Owls’ mat program since 2012, becomes a head coach for the first time at the high school level. He replaces Bryant Blackmon, who recently resigned.
The 36-year-old Dunbar is also the school’s strength and conditioning coach and assistant head football coach on coach Mac Bryan’s staff. He coaches the Owls’ defensive line.
“I always wanted to be a head coach, but never had a timetable for doing that,” Dunbar said Sunday night. “I’m very excited to be offered this position and looking forward to this new role I’ll have with the team.
“I’ve worked with some outstanding coaches and hope to pull from all of them and what they taught me. In the past, I thought there were decisions made and not made, but now that’s on me. I believed I’ve learned to do things the right way.”
In other Ooltewah coaching news, Kerry Jackson, 46, has left Red Bank where he coached wide receivers and defensive backs the past four years and joined Bryan’s staff as the wide receivers coach and offensive coordinator.
Jackson replaces Drew Akins as the OC, but Bryan will continue to call the plays from the sidelines. Akins is now the quarterback coach and offensive coordinator at Red Bank. Durel Woods will coach quarterbacks at Ooltewah.
Woods had been a volunteer coach with the Owls and worked with the defensive backs in 2015 under defensive coordinator Doug Greene.
“I got to work with the guys in spring practice and since June I’ve spent a lot of time with them,” said Jackson, who is from Sweetwater and played college football at Middle Tennessee State. “Our guys are just pups and focusing right now on the details of the position, but they’ve gotten better.”
Dunbar grew up in Florida before his family moved to Adairsville, Ga., where he played football. He attended Maryville (Tenn.) College and played defensive end and nose tackle for the Scots.
His first coaching job as a volunteer assistant in football and wrestling was at Heritage High School in Maryville. Dunbar came to Ooltewah in 2009 to coach football and was a volunteer wresting coach in 2010 as well. He was given a full-time assistant’s job by Wendell Weathers in 2012.
Dunbar has led the strength and conditioning program and been the assistant head coach since Bryan left UT-Martin to take the Owls’ job in March 2013.
“J. D. is the face the kids see the most,” Bryan said. “He has been involved with wrestling the whole time and he’s our strength and conditioning guy, has weight classes, oversees our after-school program, heads up the summer conditioning program and sees the kids on a daily basis more than anybody.
“In terms of coaching football, J.D. is a solid coach and fundamentally sound when it comes to technique. You can see his defensive linemen constantly improving the little things, which is what you want most with this age group. And he’s a very intense guy, too.”
Dunbar believes he has an advantage of a lot of coaches because he’s been around Ooltewah athletics for an extended period of time. He’s familiar with the student-athletes and they know him.
“I think it’s considerably more difficult if a coach comes from a different school,” Dunbar said. “I’m sure we might lose a few wrestlers, but me making the move internally I don’t think the (attrition) will be as much, especially since this is happening just a few weeks before school starts.”
Jackson didn’t immediately go right into coaching after playing football at MTSU under Boots Donnelly – the Blue Raiders won three Ohio Valley Conference titles while Jackson played there as a defensive back.
For 13 years, Jackson worked in sales for Kroger and then went into collections.
When he “burned out,” Jackson looked toward coaching. He called former MTSU teammate Anthony Crabtree, who was the head coach at Beech High School in Hendersonville.
Being an education major at MTSU made Jackson’s transition easier. Jackson stayed at Beech for six years before making the move to Red Bank.
Jackson knew a lot about Ooltewah football from his time at Red Bank, but admitted hearing about the Owls for years while working and coaching in the mid-section of the state.
“You heard about Ooltewah a lot in Middle Tennessee,” he said. “They’ve had a solid football program for years. And this is another great opportunity to mentor young men, but also gives me a chance to keep that football program rolling.”
The Owls have captured two District 3-5A and one Region 4-5A championships in Bryan’s three seasons and reached the state playoffs each year. The Owls are 30-7 overall and 16-2 in district/region play in that span.
Ooltewah is 47-15 dating back five years with five consecutive trips to the postseason, including quarterfinal finishes in 2012 and 2015.
Bryan said of Jackson, “Kerry brings a great deal of experience to our staff and he’s a secondary type guy, so that helps with his knowledge of the things people do with defensive coverages against wide receivers.
“He’s already done a nice job with our wide receivers, a group that doesn’t have a lot of experience.”
(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and follow on Twitter @larryfleming44)