Coaches often have a way of masking their true feelings when it comes to facing teams where they once coached. With Greenville High School coming to Ruleville and O’Bannon playing host to his team in consecutive weeks, Thomas Edwards Sr. High School head coach Quintarus McCray was quite forthcoming with his thoughts. “I can’t lie, I want to beat both of them bad,” he said. “There is a joke that I shared with both coaching staffs, that if I run the table against Greenville High and O’Bannon, just call me ‘Mr. Washington County.’”
“It’s kind of crazy too, that I’m the coach here in Ruleville now,” he explained. “I put Thomas Edwards on our schedule when I was the coach at Greenville High. So, I knew that we would be playing one another.”
McCray is off to a 1-2 start in his first year as head coach of the Thomas Edwards Sr. High School Tigers. He spent a couple of years previously as a coordinator on O’Bannon head coach Lynn Lang’s staff. Before coming to O’Bannon, McCray was the Hornets' head coach for three seasons. “To be honest, I have no ill will towards anyone,” he said. “It’s a business. You get hired, you get fired, you find better opportunities, and you move on.”
Perhaps the greater of the two tasks will be September 26 contest against O’Bannon. The Tigers will be the Greenwaves’ homecoming opponent where the crowd, and pageantry will provide extra energy for their opponent. O’Bannon is also off to a 3-0 start demonstrating a high-powered passing game with plenty of room to grow. “I’m happy for Coach Lang and those kids and their success this season,” McCray said. “Those who are juniors and seniors, I had the privilege of coaching them for a couple of seasons.”
Perhaps the more emotional of the two contests will be the first against visiting Greenville High School. There was a bittersweet ending to his time as Hornets’ head coach and a few remnants of his tenure remain. “The players who are seniors there now were freshmen when I was head coach,” he said. “They didn’t necessarily want to buy into the system that I was putting in place. But there is no advantage for me having coached the players from either team before.”
These two games mark a midseason checkpoint for the Tigers that will set the tone for the rest of the season. And after being at Riverside, Greenville High and O’Bannon in the last six years, Thomas Edwards might be this much-traveled coach’s long-term landing place. “Everywhere I’ve been, the teams have been in rebuilding stage,” McCray said. “But, here even though we are young, I feel like we will make the playoffs. And with our district having such young teams, I also think that a district championship is possible.”
