By TIM GAYLE
Special to the Elmore/Autauga News
ELMORE — Edgewood Academy Headmaster Jay Adams didn’t have to conduct a search to fill coaching vacancies in his winter and spring sports, promoting assistant coaches in winter and spring sports to head coaching positions for the upcoming year.
Adams hired Chad Michael last week as the Wildcats’ athletic director and head football coach to replace Darryl Free, the football, boys’ basketball and softball coach who left to take a job as the boys’ basketball coach at W.S. Neal.
During the coaching search, Adams said his primary role was to find an athletic director and head football coach before worrying about the other positions. As it turned out, he simply used coaches already at the school to fill the positions, allowing Michael to coach the boys’ basketball team while promoting assistants to fill the other two coaching vacancies.
“We’re extremely blessed to have these two qualified coaches already on staff,” Adams said. “Once coach Michael got into the office as athletic director, we reviewed the department and determined that it was a natural fit to promote from within. We look forward to seeing all that these two coaches accomplish as our athletic department and school continue to build on the momentum we’ve already established.”
Jason Fisher, who worked with Free on the boys’ basketball team last season, will take over the girls’ program, while Kim Brown, an assistant on championship teams under Mark Segrest in 2018 and Free in 2019, will step into a head coaching role.
Michael, who served as a football assistant at Pike Liberal Arts for two years and Autauga Academy for seven years before becoming head coach at Hooper Academy in 2015 and 2016, served as a basketball coach at Autauga and Hooper.
Fisher, a middle school science and history teacher, played collegiately at Huntingdon College and was an assistant coach on the boys’ varsity team last year while also guiding the junior varsity team to the state championship. Adams stepped in and coached the girls’ basketball team last year.
Brown, who teaches accounting, is entering her 11th year at Edgewood and has been an assistant coach on the softball team for three years, including Edgewood’s back-to-back state championship run in 2018-2019. The Wildcats’ 2020 season, of course, was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.
