Steve Brawner
Bryant High School wrestling coach Shane Clancy did not wrestle with his decision to be vaccinated for COVID-19. After his big right arm was stuck with a small needle at the River Center gym in Benton on Feb. 13, he explained, “I’m ready to ditch the mask and just be normal.”
Clancy was one of 1,200 teachers and staff members from five area school districts who received their second and final shots at a mass clinic organized by six local pharmacies.
Among the others was John Goff, a junior high math teacher who’s at increased risk as a diabetic. Goff said this has been the most stressful year of his teaching career. In addition to his health concerns, teaching quarantined students online has been challenging. It’s particularly difficult for a math teacher who needs to see a face light up when a student understands a concept, and who needs to see the sheet of paper as the student works through a problem.
January 1, 2021
In 1981, when the Jefferson Prep Patriots won the Class A State football championship with a 14-7 win over Lewisville, one of the biggest, strongest, toughest players on the team was a lineman named Buck James.
“I thought I was strong,” he recalled recently. “I thought I was tough. But I found out I wasn’t.”
James explained, “When I went to high school, the weight room was not a priority. When I went to college to play (at the University of Arkansas at Monticello), I thought the world was blue or green when I was on the football field because I was either looking at the sky or the ground. Because I got whipped. Because I wasn’t physically strong as those guys that came from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi and came from good programs.