MANSFIELD– It has been a spring of change for member schools of the 3A-1 football conference. Several head football coaches in the conference have either retired, moved on to other jobs, or, in the case of Mansfield, have made changes in their program’s leadership. Cedarville, Greenland, Hackett, and Mansfield will all have new head coaches when the 2023 season begins in August. It can be a challenging time to replace a head football coach when spring practice has concluded, and teams are now engaged in summer workouts and football camps to prepare for the opening week of the high school season that will be here in just a little more than two months.
The Mansfield district most recently made the change to relieve former head coach Tim Cothren of his coaching responsibilities in a move that surprised many. And within a very short time, the district made the additional move to hire former Booneville junior high football coach, Whit Overton, as their next head football coach for the Tigers. Overton will bring his experience from one of the most successful football programs in Arkansas to the Mansfield program.
Coach Overton was gracious to take my request for an interview just after his hire by the Mansfield school district. We visited on the phone, and I recorded his comments for our readers.
Overton is a 2004 graduate of Mansfield High School and calls his recent appointment as the school’s head football coach as a “dream come true.” Overton added, “It’s an honor to be back and to be in charge, be the head football coach of a place that I love, have put a lot of blood sweat and tears into when I was in high school, and just is just a honor to be the guy.”
Overton comes to Mansfield from Booneville where he served as a junior high football coach. When I asked him about his thoughts of leaving the very successful Bearcats program, Overton said, “It definitely wasn’t easy. It wasn’t an easy decision. I have a lot of lifelong friends in Booneville, all of the coaches there are like brothers to me. We had a great time together there and won a lot of football games. This past year, we went on the road (in the 2022 state playoffs) to Osceola, Melbourne, and basically the whole state, and just the ride over there has been tremendous. I loved it. It was just a great time and a great opportunity. When I went over there in 2017, of course they had it rolling for a long time, just to be a part of the history and tradition of Booneville was something special.”
The winning tradition of Booneville football is something that all schools and their fanbases would like to have. And that tradition, especially on offense, has been rooted in a fierce running attack that is virtually unstoppable, particularly late in games when the opposing defenses are tired. I asked Coach Overton if that was the style he would emulate in Mansfield, and the new Tigers coach said, “My philosophy, as far as offense goes, is that we are going to be sound, we are going to run the football, and we are also going to be able to pass it. With the talent that I have been able to watch on film, I believe we have to be able to spread people out (passing attack) and get the ball into your best players’ hands. So, yes, we will bring some of the “old school” mentality and package it in a “new school” sort of way where we are able to do both (run and pass). We are going to be very simplistic in our assignments, and rules. At Booneville, we changed a lot of the ways that we practiced; we ran a lot more option stuff to get the ball out on the edges because we had some speed. I want to bring that and those type of plays over here to Mansfield. I think that kind of stuff can travel. You don’t have to have the biggest offensive linemen, but if you can have some guys that can be in skill positions and with buy-in with the offensive linemen, you can do some special things.”
As of the date and time of this story, Coach Overton had not yet had the opportunity to meet his new Mansfield players. After the Mansfield school board made his hire official the night before, the new coach made the three hour round trip to Fayetteville where his former Booneville players were participating in a football camp at the University of Arkansas. He made the trip for the expressed reason of telling them goodbye. He immediately returned to Mansfield to begin his work as the Tigers new coach. Coach Overton will have approximately ten weeks to install his system and terminology in Mansfield, and two of those weeks will include the Arkansas Activities Association’s (AAA) mandatory dead weeks period. So, in short, Coach Overton has his work cut out for him to not only install the nuts and bolts of the new program, but to begin to, more importantly, install the program’s cultural changes that will be important to their future success. The Tigers players are spread out in different directions today, including baseball, FCA camps, and for other reasons, but the new coach is hoping to meet them on Thursday of this week.
Coach Overton was gracious to grant me time from his first day for this interview. As anyone can imagine, his mind must be swirling today, thinking of everything he wants and needs to do to get the program restarted under his leadership. When I asked him about his first steps as the Tigers’ coach, Overton replied by saying, “We are going to put the best players on the field; the ones that give us the best chance to win. I just want to win. If kids are excited to be a part of a small town and play both ways, we just want kids who can play. We want all of our kids to buy into our core principles of working hard and being physical. For the rest of June, we will not do any team camps. My biggest focus in the month of June will be installing offense and defense and getting the weight room going the way I want it. So, just focusing on us. We have to get the kids in here and bought into what we are going to have to be and we just have to focus inwardly.”
Installing new systems and introducing new terminology associated with those systems is going to be a challenge in the short time the Tigers will have before their first game of the 2023 season. “It will be tough, but the beauty of what we are going to do is that it is very simple. We’re not going to have 30 different plays to memorize. There is going to be five run plays, and that’s it. We are going to have five or six passing play sets, two or three play action type plays, and then two or three quick game plays, passing wise. Again, you have to create buy-in with the kids so that it is important to them to learn them, and then we can start drilling them in practice.”
Mansfield will lose some players from the line of scrimmage who played a year ago, but they will have a lot of returning players in skilled positions. “I think they had some really good seniors on the line who graduated. I think we will be young on both the offensive and defensive line. But a lot of skill guys are coming back. That ninth-grade group from a year ago was really a good group. That is another reason why I am excited about this job; there is a lot of talent around here.”
Booneville will likely move up to play in Class 4A starting with the 2024 season due to some large classes that are projected to move up at Booneville High School. If Booneville is taken out of the Tigers’ 3A-1 conference, that potentially opens up the championship and higher playoff seeds to the remainder of the field, depending on who replaces Boonville in the 3A-1. So, the outlook for Mansfield includes not only what Tigers fans are hoping their team will do this season, but for at least the next two years thereafter.
But in 2023, the 3A-1 is perhaps wider open than it has been in recent years. Booneville will again be the prohibitive favorite as they return the vast majority of their state championship runner-up team from a year ago. Injuries had an effect on the Bearcats’ season a year ago, and the Booneville faithful will be hoping the injury bug stays away from the Bearcats in 2023. But head coaching turnover in the conference remains to be seen what effect it will have on the rest of the conference as they enter conference play in September. “I think the conference is more open than ever”, according to the new Tigers coach. With Booneville out of the conference starting 2024, it could be possible that the battle for the new conference’s champion could play out to be a battle between Charleston and Mansfield. Other conference programs, such as Hackett and Greenland, may have a lot to say about that, but it is conceivable that talent-wise, Charleston and Mansfield may be in the same place over the next three years.
As a result of Overton’s hire, the assistant coaching staff, according to the new coach will remain the same. The exception will be that he will be looking to hire another assistant coach. “I get to hire one guy; I am hoping it is going to be a defensive coordinator. But Stovall (Keith Stovall) and Robinson (Layton Robinson) are both staying on. Stovall will stay as the defensive line coach, and that is what he wants to do…he takes a lot of pride in it. I haven’t had the chance to talk with Layton yet.”
RNN Sports would like to thank the Tigers’ new coach for talking with us today after just having been hired the night before. He was very patient and open with us with our questions, and we thank him for taking time with us while knowing he has so much on his plate to accomplish in such a short time.
All of us wish Coach Overton the best of success next season and beyond, and stay with RNN Sports as we follow Coach Overton and the Tigers into the upcoming high school football season!
