Staying at home

Mount Ida coach’s roots are in the area

By Eric Moore

LITTLE ROCK — When Mount Ida football coach Mike White lead the Lions to a state championship last year, it was the culmination of something he had been working for his entire life.

Growing up at Mount Ida, White was a member of nearly every athletic team fielded by the school, but he never got to experience the highs that he brought the school to as head football coach.

In just his third year as head coach (ninth overall at the school), White assured the Lions a place in history as the only undefeated team in 2007, taking down a team that seemed to many to be unstoppable.

“It’s hard to believe,” White said. “But I knew we had a chance from the get-go.”

W hen he took over t he program in 2005, he initiated some goals for the team. The first was to win a conference championship outright for the first time in 15 years, which they did. By the 2007 season, the goal had changed to winning a state championship,and once again, he and his team delivered.

With two major goals reached in the past three years, White is left with greatexpectations, but they are mainly self-imposed. How does he follow up the state championship performance of 2007?

“ You w in another one,” W hite said. “Expectations have changed, we’re expected to do a little bit more now.”

As the head baseball coach, White also helped lead the Lions to their first regional ch a mpion sh ip i n s e ver a l years.

When he graduated from Mount Ida in 1993, he had no intention of coming back to help the Lions pad the trophy case.

It wasn’t until his third year at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville that he started giving serious consideration to coaching.

“Three years into college I was just working on my degree,” White said. “I had a professor that talked, well he kind of forced me, into getting the rest of the certification to coach.”

Fresh out of college, White took a job at the small St. Paul High School, where he was the head basketball coach for the senior high and junior high boys.

After one year, he received a call from his former football coach asking him if he would come back and be an assistant at Mount Ida.

White jumped at the chance of being able to return home and instill the values he learned from his coach to a new generation of players.

“Being able to come back, I don’t know how to put it in words,” White said.

The chance to coach with his mentor, Frank Stapleton, was a learning experience as well as one of the biggest treats of White’s career, he said.

In addition to his first few years with the team, he was contemporaries with Benny We st on (a not her for mer coach, now the athletic director) and defensive coordinator Jerry Sandlin.

As much fun as White has had over the last decade, he said he gets the most joy from watching his players grow and mature during the three years they are in his charge.

“I just enjoy working with the kids,” White said. “Setting goals for them and watching them come through, just seeing kids reach their own goals.”

Nowhere is that more apparent than with his nephew, Cade, 7, whom W hite ha s raised since he was 6.

With Cade, he and his wife, Sherill, are typical parents, taking him to summer sports games and teaching him the values and principles that White grew up with himself.

Some of White’s fondest moments away from the gridiron or the diamond are the times he gets to spend with his nephew.

Whether it is a hunting trip or coaching his summer baseball team, White wants Cade to grow up with the same kind of experiences he did.

When White is not the leader of young men on the field of play, he can be found in a mound of sand with others in Mount Ida in their weekly volleyball game.

Tri-Lakes, Pages 123 on 07/13/2008