A crosstown rival becomes a Hurricane head coach

JHS just named Jo Beth Mathis as its new head volleyball coach. Then named Jo Beth Carmack, she was the star of Nettleton's Class AAA state champion volleyball team that, regrettably, beat our Class AAAA state champ Hurricane for the Overall state title in the fall of our senior year. (The small inset black and white photo of Blair Huckabee playing volleyball in her bio entry below is from that match at the then-very new ASU Convocation Center.) I actually got to know Jo Beth some years later, in the late 1990s, when she was the coach at Lyon College and I was working at the Batesville Daily Guard newspaper. Twenty years after triumphing over JHS, she will be leading the Hurricane on the court starting next season.