The White Hall School District hired a big-name head coach for its football program for the third time in five seasons Friday, landing Daryl Patton from Little Rock Southwest.
Patton, 55, is a 1986 graduate of Bryant High School, where he served as head coach from 1998 through 2002. He then coached at Fayetteville, where he led the Purple Dogs to four state championships between 2007 and 2015 in Class 7A, the largest school classification in Arkansas. Two more of his Fayetteville teams reached the state championship game and finished as runners-up.
“What a great opportunity,” Patton said. “Everybody I’ve talked to and reached out to about the job, they all said the same thing. They said, ‘Coach, if you’re lucky and fortunate enough to get the job, you hit a home run. This is a great school, a one-school community that supports its athletics. You’ve got an administration that supports athletics as well and will remove obstacles to give it a chance to be successful.”
White Hall Superintendent Gary Williams said he and others realized during interviews with Patton that the coach would bring much experience and success to the Bulldogs.
“We had a strong candidate pool of applicants who were quality coaches, and I thought Coach Patton’s stance on building players, developing players and working with assistant coaches were what we were looking for,” Williams said. “We’re thankful we got this wrapped up, and we know what next year looks like.”
Jason Mitchell had served as interim head coach for White Hall since the summer, right after the Bulldogs endured two tragedies in a matter of weeks. Ryan Mallett, the former University of Arkansas and NFL quarterback who was hired at White Hall in February 2022, drowned in the Florida Gulf Coast during a vacation in June. The day before graduation in May, wide receiver and standout track and field athlete Ben Redix, who lived in the same neighborhood as Mallett, was shot to death in North Little Rock.
“You have the absolute toughest and most resilient kids in the state of Arkansas,” Patton said. “They’ve been through an extremely tough situation. I’m just excited about working with these young men and help develop them into something special and help them do something this school has not done, which is to take them all the way to the top.”
White Hall has gone 4-6 in back-to-back seasons since 2021, when Bobby Bolding led the Bulldogs to the 5A championship game, where they lost to Pulaski Academy. Bolding, the first of the three big-name coaches hired at White Hall over the past five seasons, coached the Bulldogs from 2019-21. He had previously won state championships at Stuttgart and Pine Bluff.
White Hall started this past season 3-1 but suffered five straight losses — four of them by seven points or less — before closing the season with a home win over Watson Chapel.
The Bulldogs’ program is “not down in the dumps,” Patton said, noting they are 16-6-1 against archrival Sheridan and have averaged 6 wins per year over the past 23 years.
Patton was head coach at Bauxite from 2016-19 and spent the past four seasons as Southwest’s inaugural head coach, going 6-31. The Gryphons finished 2-8 and 1-6 in the 7A-Central Conference, each of the last three seasons.
Patton has been known to turn programs into state contenders.
“I’m super-excited about this opportunity and I’m ready to get to work,” Patton said. “Let’s go. Let’s go today.”