Dream team

Bauxite head coach enjoys working with best friends

By DONNA LAMPKINS STEPHENS CONTRIBUTING WRITER

LITTLE ROCK — Jon Watson has put together his dream football staff at Bauxite High School.

The wily veteran spent years observing and mentoring other coaches, and when he went to Bauxite in 1990, the time was just about right to bring in two of his best friends.

Dennis Hudgens joined him in 1993; John Taylor followed in 2005.

They form the nucleus of a staff that’s used to being near the top of its class in Arkansas high school football.

“Me and Taylor and Watson have a combined 90 years of experience,” Hudgens said.

But the experience isn’t the only thing that makes this group unique.

“There’s not a lot of egos here,” Taylor said. “We enjoy working with each other. We’re in a real good community; the school is very good, and our kids, not just the athletes, are fine people. It makes it a good place to work.

“As far as working together and being a knowledgeable staff, it’s been exceptional. You don’t have an opportunity to work on a staff like that very often.”

Watson grew up in Earle and earned all-state honors (as end) as the Bulldogs went unbeaten in 1969. Although he had some offers to play at Ouachita Baptist and Henderson State, he wanted to stay close to home, so he gave up football to be a student at Arkansas State.

He hadn’t really thought about going into coaching.

“I was so green, so naïve,” he said. “There weren’t any career orientation classes at that time, so I just thought college was where you went for four more years just like high school, and then you got out and got a job.”

While standing in line inthe rain to register for classes in January 1970, he remembered being asked his major.

“I said, ‘Well, I guess business,’” he said.

He took a few business classes and set the curve in his Western Civilization class, where he befriended a couple of state troopers also taking the class.

“They got to register early, so after that I got every class I ever wanted,” Watson recalled. “I learned a lesson right quick - it ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.”

During his sophomore year, he roomed with a friend from high school who was a physical education major.

“I asked my adviser one day, ‘What can I be when I get out with this (business) degree?’ and he told me, ‘A manager at a Fred’s Dollar Store.’ I knew I didn’t care anything about being a manager at a Fred’s Dollar Store, so I asked my roommate, ‘What will you do when you get out?’ and he said be a football coach.

“I changed my major the next day.”

Although he said he sometimes thinks about what might have been if he had stuck with business, he’s pleased with the choice he made.

“In coaching, the highs are so high and the lows are so low, but the highs make it all worthwhile,” he said.

His first job was at Paragould where he was assistant junior high football coach, senior high football assistant, assistant in junior and senior high track, sixth-grade football coach, seventh-grade basketball coach and drove the girls basketball bus - all for $8,600.

“It was like getting paid to take recess,” he said.

At Paragould he worked with such Arkansas high school coaching names as Bill Keedy, Johnny Watson, RonyJones, Butch Duncan and Gary Washington.

After a year at Paragould, he went to Trumann as head junior high coach, working five years under Lynn Greenwell as offensive coordinator at the high school.

“We had some pretty successful teams, but we never could get over the hump with Osceola or R ivercrest,” he said. “While I was there I met my lifelong close friend, John Taylor, who student taught under me. He helped me coach the eighth grade and junior high team. I knew right then he was a great coach, one of the better coaches I had even as a student assistant.”

And then Watson got antsy and decided he wanted to be head coach at a high school.

“I was just as green and naïve about how to become a head coach as I was about starting college,” he said. “I got in my vehicle and drove. I made a list of schools I thought I wanted to coach at. I know they thought I was goofy because I didn’t call ahead; I just walked in and asked if the superintendent was in, and if he was I sat down and told him if he had a head job open I’d like to apply for it someday.”

His friend James Wright, who was coaching at Gould, had heard that the job at Gillett might be opening.

“That was probably the greatest stop I ever made in coaching,” he said. “Four days later, I was hired and got me about a $3,000 raise.”

That was 1981. The Wolves had a strong football tradition but didn’t have much returning that fall.

“I started with 15 kids,” he said. “But they were kids who didn’t mind working, and we finished second in the conference and made the playoffs. We had the privilege of play-ing the Barton Bears in their heyday, and they beat us like a drum.”

He remembered having to invent a new backfield on the way to the first game after his stud running back missed the bus.

When the student didn’t produce an acceptable excuse the following Monday, Watson dismissed him from the team.

“That may be the best coaching move I ever made,” he said. “I never had another kid miss the bus.”

Gillett became one of thepowers in Class A Arkansas high school football in the mid-1980s, ultimately reaching the state semifinals and finishing 11-2 with both losses to Gould.

A fter leav ing Gillett - which eventually consolidated with DeWitt - he went to Hampton for two years before arriving at Bauxite in 1990.

Wright, his old friend, had left Gould for Lake Village.

“That’s where he hooked up with his longtime, very loyal assistant, Dennis Hudgens,” Watson said.

“We played Lake Village, and we kept in touch. Well, I’d been here three years when they left Lake Village, and I was going through a phase atBauxite where I had too many chiefs on the staff and I needed an Indian. You can put it just like that.

“Dennis has a lot of good qualities, but I have never met a more loyal assistant than he is - and loyalty is big, big, big in coaching circles.”

Hudgens grew up in Monticello and played baseball at UA-Monticello. His first job was at Marion under James Hendricks - who had coached under Wright when Rison won a state title in 1970. That tie got him on Wright’s staff at Lake Village in 1983.

Lake Village reached the Class A state championship game at War Memorial Stadium in 1986 but fell to Booneville in the title game.

“Those were good years,” Hudgens said

“We played Coach Watson and went to coaching clinics; he knew I was loyal and told Coach Wright, ‘If Hudgens ever leaves you, I want him.’”

The opportunity came in 1993. Hudgens said his best experience was being able to coach his son, Jay, on Bauxite’s 1996 state championship team. The Miners reached the title game in ’95 also.

“When I moved here, I figured I wouldn’t be leaving,” he said.

“Now I’m starting my 16th year. It’s great when your best friends are your coaching buddies. As a staff we can say whatwe think, but we don’t take it personal. We try to find a solution. I’ve been on three good staffs, and a lot of coaches are never on one good one.”

Taylor grew up in Osceola. After student teaching under Watson at Trumann as an ASU P.E. major, he had assistant coaching stops at Mountain Home - also under, who else? Wright - and Osceola. He also had five years as head coach at Walnut Ridge.

“We’d always talked about coaching together somewhere down the line, and things happened to work out here,” he said.

“It’s been great.”

What’s missing from Taylor’s resumé, though, is a statechampionship. He wasn’t on the Miner staff in ’96.

“This is my 31st year, so I’ve got a few more to go,” he said.

It could happen again.

“We have won here at Bauxite when we’ve had less talent,” Hudgens said. “The only time we had more talent or equal, we won a st ate championship.”

The combination of personalities - both among the coaches and the players - has worked.

“We’ve won 171 games in 18 years,” said Watson, whose record with the Miners entering this season was 171-42-1. “I just hope we’re not sitting at 171 when this season’s over.”

Tri-Lakes, Pages 135, 136 on 09/21/2008