My wife just came in and told me Coach Jan Delaughter was retiring after around 30 years of coaching and teaching the best math in Southwest Mississippi. I answered she also was a top notch coach all through the years. Her teams won games all through the years, plus she coached softball and won year after year. I’m talking about 30 years, not 8 to 10. It takes some kind of dedication just to make all those away games through good roads and backroads, sometimes bad weather. All those years and as far as I know every child got home safely. Sometimes having to wait and wait and wait for parents to come get their child when the bus got back to school.

Coach Delaughter had good help and coaching with assistant coaches through some of the years with Coach Lori Britt.

Coach Delaughter also drove a bus route for the school. One has to have grit in their craw and planning ahead every second, minute, hour and day to keep going like she has. She is to be admired. Even in the summer break she’s got ball camps to get her players to, then her own practicing at LSAC. Her teams won tournaments time after time and the state of Mississippi tournament to be No. 1 in Mississippi basketball or softball.

I can’t remember a time she was out sick very much at all. She was a full-time coach of basketball and softball with wins, wins, wins and a No. 1 math teacher and raised a family, at that. Whoever fills her shoes better have grit in their craw and a drive to succeed they didn’t know they had. I”m glad I know her.

I could go on and on about her and the great athletes she had through the years but I have said enough. She is a great success story and wins, wins, wins for 30 years. I think she coached some volleyball, too. There is no doubt she is the No. 1 woman coach in Lincoln County for years and years and this whole area of Southwest Mississippi. She can easily go to sleep at night with a big smile for all the positive ways she has touched young students with her teaching and coaching.

Ronny Spencer

Former Loyd Star vocational agriculture teacher