Home Sweet Home 

Burns cemented his journey with 10-speed bikes, fun camaraderie

By Kevin Taylor

Alma Schools 

It's a hot June morning, and beads of sweat are forming below his hairline. The wind is whipping from right to left, and the brunt of the summer heat is unleashing its wrath on Crawford County. 

Oh yeah, it's yet to be 9 a.m. 

But with a nice breeze, Jerrod and Jeremie Burns are carefree teenagers as they glide downhill on the right shoulder of Hwy. 64, passing Frog Bayou before easing past Terry and Louise Fimple’s T & L Barbershop, bending their 10-speed bicycles past Kiddie Kollege and eventually Alma High School.

"I was 40 years old when I felt like it was safe to tell my mom that story," quips Jerrod Burns. "It wasn't... she was mad."

The drive from Burns’ house on Old Concord Road to Keith and Daryl Fimple home along Arkansas 162 usually takes 10 minutes. 

“Have you ever ridden a bike from Concord Road to Kibler? It takes forever,” Jerrod Burns said. “We had two 10 speeds and one day Jeremie said, 'Let's turn left (from Old Concord Road to Sunnyside), and you'd get down the hill (Hwy. 64) and coast.’ Before you get to Alma, there was a bridge back in the day with no shoulder, so you had to turn and look and make sure there wasn't a diesel coming. You would get here (AHS), and that was before mandatory workouts, and we would work out, play basketball in Crabtree, and then go to Kibler."

Three-and-a-half decades later, Jerrod wheels his pickup into the parking lot across from Crabtree Gymnasium. It's still hot in June 2024, though the parking lot is now paved, and the almost 60-year-old gym is fully air-conditioned. 

Jerrod Burns is home again. 

A 1995 Alma graduate, Burns got the nod on April 15 to succeed Doug Loughridge as the Athletic Director. After 25 years in Hillbilly purple, Burns is happy to be clad in Alma green again. 

"I remember thinking, this is the place where people you grew up with built — like Charles Dyer,” Burns said. “It was a special time growing up here. When I played for (Eddie) Corder, we were the first team to win 20 games, which meant something. And you talk about coach (Frank) Vines... it was all about doing the little things right — Coach (David) Hale, and Coach (Stan) Flenor, Coach (Brooks) Witherspoon, and Coach (Len) Hall. All those people poured their life into kids. Coaches would show up at my grandmother's birthday party. How many kids did they do that for?

"I always said when my daughter (Brooklyn) graduated, I was a free agent.”

Back in 2000, a decade or so after those bike rides to and from the Fimple's, Burns became a Hillbilly, for all those years, without an actual interview. Well, sort of. 

‘That was my interview’

"We're in the end zone at Subiaco Academy and Dr. (Richard) Abernathy said, 'Hey Scott (Stone), don't we have a special education job open?' He said, 'Yeah, we are going to have one. Why don't we go ahead and hire this guy.' He told me to come see him on Monday,” explains Burns. 

Two days later, Burns signed on with Ozark without ever having a formal interview. 

"That was my interview, on a Friday night in Subiaco, in the end zone," kids Burns. "I just went in and signed my contract." 

Jerrod Burns became a Hillbilly for the next 25 years. He coached soccer (his Lady HIllbillies, long extinct) and won three games. "Two of those came against Clarksville," he said, before stepping in to help former Ozark baseball coach Matt Coleman. 

"Dr. Abernathy calls me in and says, 'Hey, I want you to coach a spring sport. I thought, cool, I love baseball.' He said, 'No, I want you to coach girls soccer.' I told him I didn't know anything about it," Burns said. "But those girls, from 2000, that experience was humbling and amazing. We were all learning together. Back then, you only had a few schools you could play. 

"You had Greenwood, Northside, Southside, Dardanelle, and Clarksville. We had a program for three years, and I'm the winningest coach in Ozark girls soccer history.”

Burns had befriended Greenwood football coach Chris Young in college (University of Central Arkansas), and now they were opposite sidelines — Burns coaching the Lady Hillbillies and Young coaching up the Greenwood Lady Bulldogs. "He wouldn't necessarily take it easy on me, but he made sure to let girls who may get a lot of playing time play against us," Burns said. 

Burns assisted Coleman for a few years, but when former Ozark principal Eddie Tipton left for a coaching stop in Texas, Burns got into administration. 

Burns also scouted football games with former Ozark girls basketball coach Ron Rippy. 

"When I was getting my master's those first two or three years, I didn't coach anything but soccer so that I would go to games and he (Rippy) taught me how to pull the ketchup packet and dip one fry in... I thought that's pretty cool,” Burns said. “He (Rippy) knew a lot about football. He was all about hard work and detail and loving kids, and coach (John) Parrish was the same way.”

Ozark, through Burns’ eyes, was Alma 25 years in reverse. 

"I tell people, 'To me, Ozark was Alma when I was growing up.' People supported everything at Alma when I was growing up, and it was like that in Ozark,” he said. "I've had people call me up over the years (to offer jobs). 

“But I always wanted my kids to grow up and have a life; they're a Hillbilly.”

Little League 

There are no planned statues for the many Little League volunteers who helped shape Burns’ life in the 1980s. 

"Delmar Moses, Donnie Self, Clarence Roark, Thell Parker Sr. — those were the guys that coached us in little league," Burns said. "Then you get into basketball and you had Wesley ‘Sticky’ Jones... that was Alma Little League basketball. Those guys were the Mount Rushmore of Alma Little League back in the day.”

When they weren’t making tackles for Delmar Moses, the Burns were immersed in heated pickup basketball games at Keith and Daryl Fimples. 

"We just learned to win," Burns said. "For me growing up with the Kibler Mafia... the Fimples, the Hickses, the Burdicks, the Dailys... we would come to practice here, at the high school, and then we'd go to the Fimples and play every kind of ball you can think of, especially barn basketball."

Terry and the late Louise Fimple fixed a basketball goal in a barn-like shed where Daryl Fimple, Jeremie Burns, Lee Daily, Jeff Hicks, and others dueled for hours on end. Wiffle ball, flag football, basketball. And when they were done, they'd jump into Fimple's swimming pool and play basketball with a makeshift goal they had concocted out of old PVC pipe. 

When they were finished, Jerrod and Jeremie pedaled their bikes back to Old Concord Road. 

"That's where you learned to play ball and you learned to win," Jerrod Burns said. "The older guys would let the little guys play, too. If anything's changed, it's the way kids play after practice. You would come to practice here, and that was just the beginning."