Rob Coleman

New Cabot athletic director happy to be back at alma mater

Rob Coleman, a 1985 graduate of Cabot High School, left the Auburn University football coaching staff to become the new athletic director for the Cabot School District. Coleman coached at several schools in Arkansas, including Hughes, Vilonia, Pulaski Oak Grove and Bentonville, before working one season for Gus Malzahn and the Auburn Tigers. Coleman replaced Steve Roberts as Cabot athletic director.
Rob Coleman, a 1985 graduate of Cabot High School, left the Auburn University football coaching staff to become the new athletic director for the Cabot School District. Coleman coached at several schools in Arkansas, including Hughes, Vilonia, Pulaski Oak Grove and Bentonville, before working one season for Gus Malzahn and the Auburn Tigers. Coleman replaced Steve Roberts as Cabot athletic director.

New Cabot Public Schools Athletic Director Rob Coleman has coached all over the state and even at the collegiate level. But when his chance to come home to Cabot appeared, he jumped at it.

Coleman, a 1985 graduate of Cabot High School, left his job as a defensive analyst for the University of Auburn Tigers football program in Auburn, Alabama, to become the athletic director at his hometown school, following the resignation of Steve Roberts, who left Cabot to become an assistant executive director at the Arkansas Activities Association.

“When Coach Roberts got the athletic director’s job here, I had applied for it,” Coleman said. “It’s kind of been my dream job for the last while or so. I thought if it ever came back open, I wanted to try to get it because Cabot is home.”

Roberts served as athletic director at Cabot from July 2011 until he left at the beginning of 2017. Roberts followed longtime Athletic Director Johnny White.

“I found out [Roberts] was leaving around Thanksgiving,” Coleman said. “I just decided that I was going to do everything I could to try to get it. It worked out for me. I was blessed. I’m so glad to be here.”

Coleman took an interesting path into coaching. Despite graduating from Cabot High School, he did not play football for longtime coach Mike Malham. Coleman was a baseball player.

“Coach Malham has a rule that if you don’t go though offseason, then you don’t play football for him,” Coleman said. “I was a baseball guy, and baseball was my first love.”

Coleman said former assistant football coach Charles Donham was umpiring summer baseball and asked Coleman why he didn’t play football.

Spurred on by that, Coleman went to the football field and worked out with his best friend and Cabot quarterback Brian Morris, catching passes. He said Malham called him over and asked him if he was new to Cabot, knowing full well that he had lived there most of his life.

“[Malham] said, ‘Thanks for coming out. I wish you had gone through offseason,’” Coleman said. “He is that way today. I respect that. I would like to have played, but I didn’t go through offseason, and offseason football at Cabot is tough. You don’t pay the price; you don’t get to reap the rewards.”

Coleman played baseball at both Henderson State University in Arkadelphia and the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. He received his bachelor’s degree in physical education and health from Henderson State in 1990. At that point, he thought he wanted to coach high school baseball. Instead, he met a coach who guided him down a different path.

Coleman was hired as a junior high football coach and track coach at Hughes High School.

“I always thought I’d coach high school baseball,” he said. “When I went to Hughes; they didn’t have high school baseball.”

This is where he met Gus Malzahn.

Malzahn was the head football coach at Hughes, where Coleman worked for four years. The highlight of their run was a spot in the 1994 Class AA state championship game, where the Blue Devils lost to the Lonoke Jackrabbits.

Coleman left Hughes for Vilonia, where he coached for five years, but it wouldn’t be the last time he would work with Malzahn.

However, Coleman got out of coaching for a year, becoming a real estate appraiser in Lonoke County.

“I didn’t enjoy that, so I got back into coaching,” he said.

His next coaching stop was at Pulaski Oak Grove High School in North Little Rock. He worked there two years. However, that job was short-lived, as he and his wife, Marion, who is also a teacher, were let go because of a reduction in staff at the Pulaski County Special School District school.

“That is when I was able to go to Shiloh Christian in Springdale,” Coleman said. “They needed a defensive coordinator, and I knew the head coach, Chris Wood.”

Coleman worked two years at Shiloh under Wood and new coach Josh Floyd. Coleman then hooked up with Malzahn again, this time at Springdale High School, coaching one of the best teams in Arkansas history.

The 2005 Springdale Bulldogs went 14-0, winning the Class AAAAA state championship. The team featured the “Springdale 5,” which included quarterback Mitch Mustain, receiver Damian Williams, offensive tackle Bartley Webb, tight end Ben Cleveland and receiver Andrew Norman.

After his two-year run at Springdale, Coleman worked with another coaching legend for nine years, Bentonville’s Barry Lunney Sr.

While at Bentonville, Coleman got a call from Malzahn, asking him if he wanted to come to Auburn as a coaching analyst.

“He offered me a spot as an analyst a few years ago,” Coleman said. “My daughter Kindal was a junior in high school. She had been at Bentonville for a long time at that point. She had played basketball. It really wasn’t a good time to leave Bentonville. We were rolling in football. My wife taught there. A couple of years later, [Malzahn] offered me another opportunity to [work with him]. I jumped at that opportunity.”

During his one year at Auburn, Coleman worked with linebackers off the field.

“I made sure their driver’s licenses, insurance, car registration — all that stuff — stayed current,” he said. “I made sure they went to class and their tutoring and mentoring sessions. If they had an appointment, I stayed after them and made sure they kept it.”

While Coleman did all that, he also got to be involved with football-related activities.

I watched a lot of film and made a lot of reports,” he said. “I went to a lot of game-plan meetings, stuff like that. We weren’t allowed to coach on the field. We could attend meetings and take part in the meetings.”

However, while being a defensive analyst was a foot in the door into college coaching, it was a big change for Coleman.

“It’s hard to go from having your own room and your own group of kids to doing everything to prepare for the game and letting someone else coach the kids,” he said. “Not being able to do that was not fun.”

Coleman said that when he decided to leave Auburn, Malzahn was understanding.

“Gus and I are pretty good friends,” Coleman said. “He knew one way or the other that I was going back to high school athletics. He wasn’t shocked or surprised.”

Malzahn said Coleman is a coach who helped him work his way up from Hughes to Auburn.

“There are a lot of guys, throughout the course of my career, that have helped me get to where I am, and Rob is definitely in that top bunch,” Malzahn said. “We started out together at Hughes. We kinda learned football together there, and we got to work together again in Springdale in 2005.

“This past year at Auburn, we got the chance to work together again.”

Malzahn described Coleman as “one of my best friends.”

“He is just a super person, a very good football coach,” Malzahn said of Coleman. “I’m excited for him. It’s a great fit with Cabot being his hometown. I think he’ll do a wonderful job as athletic director.

“Rob is just a professional and quality person. He cares about young people. He understands Cabot. He grew up there. He knows the state very well.”

Coleman, who holds a master’s degree in secondary administration from Arkansas State University, was officially hired at Cabot on Feb. 17.

Cabot Superintendent Tony Thurman said there were approximately 20 applicants for the athletic director’s position.

“We did have a strong pool of applicants and interviewed six of those 20 with the most impressive resumes,” Thurman said.

A panel of district administrators served as the interview committee, Thurman said.

“Mr. Coleman stood out based on his varied experiences in high school athletics and recent work at the collegiate level,” Thurman said. “Mr. Coleman is a graduate of Cabot High School and knows what the school system and the Panthers mean to our community.”

Coleman expressed his thankfulness to Thurman and the district for the opportunity to work at his alma mater.

“I have so much appreciation for Dr. Thurman and the administrative staff for giving me this opportunity,” Coleman said. “I know there are big shoes to fill with Coach White and Coach Roberts, who were the athletic directors before me. I just hope I can live up to their standards.”

Coleman said Cabot has changed tremendously during his time away from the community.

“When I graduated here in 1985, Cabot was a small town,” he said. “We weren’t in the largest classification then. We were pretty close. Now it’s not even similar. We have athletic facilities that are second to none. I worked at Bentonville, where they have athletic facilities comparable to this.”

However, he said, one thing hasn’t changed — community support.

“If we need something, all we have to do is ask,” Coleman said. “That is the thing I like about Cabot. Football is important, but when it’s not football season, basketball is just as important. And when it’s not basketball season, all the others are important. All the opportunities that these students have now to be competitive on the state level or national level, it’s better now than it was back then. And Cabot had good athletics when I was coming through. But now, there are so many more opportunities for our students.”

Coleman said he hopes to continue the tradition of excellence set forth by White and Roberts during their tenures as athletic director.

“I just want to keep the ship going the way it is,” he said. “I have some visitors that I want to see. My job is to serve these coaches and these athletes. Whatever it takes to make their jobs easier, provide our athletes with everything they need to be competitive — that is what I’m here for.”

One thing that Coleman is bringing to the table is a live stream of Cabot athletics. It is something that he saw during his time at Bentonville High School.

“We have signed up with Mascot Media,” he said. “We’re going to live-stream our football games. It is going to benefit all of our sports.”

Bentonville schools have a mobile application that allows fans to watch those teams live.

“We’re going to have that, hopefully, even better,” Coleman said. “Toward the end of the summer, we’re going to make it a big deal.

“Our goal is to live-stream all football, home-basketball and home-volleyball games,” he said, adding that the district will look at the other sports as well.

Coleman said the athletic department will work with Chuck Massey and his television class, which already shows the football and basketball games on the video boards and televisions in Panther Stadium and Panther Arena.

“It’s a big undertaking, but our athletes deserve it,” he said.

Coleman said his staff in the athletic office is great. They include Kelly Spencer, assistant athletic director; Amanda Elizandro, athletics assistant and communications; and Terry Keck, administrative assistant.

“I have the three sweetest ladies in Cabot that I work with,” he said.

Coleman was also complimentary of the coaching staff at Cabot.

“I’m honored that I’m working with Coach Malham, who is already in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame,” he said. “[Malham] is one of the greatest high school football coaches the state has ever seen.”

Coleman also said girls basketball coach Carla Crowder is a legend.

“She will be in the Hall of Fame; I have no doubt,” he said. “[Boys basketball coach] Jerry Bridges is a definite hall of famer. He’s won everywhere he’s been. Leon White, our track coach, is probably going to be in the hall of fame. What an honor for me to know them.”

In addition to his daughter, Kindal, Coleman and his wife have a son, Dallas, and a daughter-in-law, Brenley. Dallas Coleman is an assistant football coach at Hewitt-Trussville High School in Trussville, Alabama.

Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.

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