Madison High School head football coach and athletic director Darren Ponder has resigned, according to articles in the Asheville Citizen-Times and Marshall News-Record and Sentinel.
According to an article posted on the Citizen-Times' website, Ponder referred to this past year in a letter to the News-Record and Sentinel as "the most difficult year I have ever experienced."
During last football season, almost a dozen football players received suspensions from varsity play after admitting "illegal use of alcohol, marijuana or prescription drugs", and further complicating the coach's situation was the arrest and conviction of one of his assistant coaches and the public defiance of several varsity basketball players who quit the team during a game last season, according to the article.
Ponder spent only one year as head coach at his alma mater after previously serving as athletic director and assistant football coach at Mitchell High School, finishing 2007 with a winless 0-11 record and playing several games with a number of players brought up from the junior varsity squad.
The coach turned in his resignation to Madison County officials on Monday, citing that boys weren’t trying out for the team, he couldn’t staff his coaching positions, and the team didn’t have the money to “buy the things needed for the program”, according to the published story.
"It seemed like everything we tried to do, the door slammed on it," Ponder stated in his letter to the paper. “We hate to see Darren leave," Madison principal Tony Tipton was quoted to say. "Darren is a fine fellow, and under the circumstances he did a good job last year. He hung in there."
The school is currently posting both positions and setting up interviews. As for Coach Ponder, his future is uncertain. "I have talked to a couple of schools over the last week, but nothing is definite yet.”
