My Thoughts Concerning Mark Peach's Removal at Anderson County

By John Herndon

I have largely stayed quiet about the Anderson County sports scene since I retired from The Anderson News on Dec. 31, 2018. Yes, I have attended some games and even wrote three stories for 110forChrist.com on some Anderson basketball players and did some followup to a story I had done not long before I left the newspaper.

But for the most part, I stayed quiet and tried looking at writing from a different perspective as I enjoyed some, but not all, Anderson football and basketball games while making my rounds to high schools and colleges around Kentucky.

I wanted to give my successor some space and give myself some breathing room. In addition, I really don’t have a medium, other than Facebook, to provide anything other than the feature stories that I have posted at 110forChrist.com and KentuckySings.com as well as some other publications.

So, I hesitated to say anything about Anderson County’s puzzling removal of Mark Peach as the Bearcat football coach. I don’t know any of the reasons other than second hand info and what was stated in yesterday’s edition of The Anderson News. I won’t get into those things here. What’s done is done. I personally think it was a move that Anderson County will deeply regret, but only time will tell.

Mark Peach embraces his son, Brett, following Anderson County's loss to Madison Southern in the 2017 state playoffs.

One of the things that makes small town journalism different from the larger papers is that as a writer, you really get to know the people you work with. I jokingly tell my longtime friend, Coach Sam Harp, that I knew him long before he was a household word in Kentucky.

The first football game I ever covered was Harp’s debut as Anderson coach back in 1985. The Bearcats hosted a pretty good Marion County team but lost that night. The two things that stick out in my mind from that night were that Harp wanted to talk -- I listened -- and that I misidentified the kid who scored two touchdowns for Marion.

Coach Harp went on to be Kentucky’s Coach of the Year in 1986 while at Anderson and then won seven state championships after moving on to Danville. I guess you could say he did all right. As for me, I stayed around and received my share of honors from my peers, so I guess you could say I did all right too.

Before Coach Harp left Anderson, I witnessed some of the greatest moments in Anderson football history. In 1986, the Bearcats whipped Pikeville, a perennial state power, then beat Bardstown for the first time in school history. Anderson went 10-0 before losing to Fort Knox, which was a powerhouse at the time, 21-20 in the state playoffs. I still say that Anderson-Fort Knox game, which featured coaches who are now considered two of the greats in Kentucky history, Sam Harp and Joe Jaggers, was the best football game I ever covered.

By mid-season, a sophomore tackle had cracked the Anderson starting lineup. His name was Mark Peach.

The next year, Anderson made the playoffs again and traveled to Newport Catholic, a team that had been to three consecutive state championship games, for the playoff opener. Most people thought NewCath would destroy Anderson but Harp told me he believed Anderson could win. And the Bearcats did, 16-13. Late in the game, NewCath appeared ready to score the go-ahead touchdown and tried to run up the middle but the Anderson tackles, who assistant coach Jerry Perry called “The Fat Boys,” stopped them two straight plays.

Those “Fat Boys” were Jerry Hurst and Mark Peach.

On the next play, NewCath tried to run the option, but a defensive end -- I believe it was Tony Fint -- forced a fumble and Anderson recovered. Game over and Anderson had its first-ever playoff win.
You will see why I bring those memories up in a few moments.

Fast forward to 1999. I was checking the scores of the Hancock County Hornets and their first-year coach, Mark Peach.

Mark had graduated from Campbellsville University and had been an assistant at several places, but was now running the show for the first time. Hancock advanced all the way to the Class A state championship game before losing. At the time, I took note that Mark Peach would be a great hire for Anderson County some day if he wanted to come home.

I followed his career at Hancock, then at Paul L. Dunbar (where he won a regional championship) and Campbellsville University (where his teams were ranked in the NAIA Top 25). When the Anderson job came open in 2004, Mark was still at Campbellsville, but a few weeks later he stepped down, putting things in motion for him to return home.

I remember the day Mark was announced as Anderson’s new coach. After some remarks from principal Ray Woodyard, Mark talked a few minutes then told his new team that he believed they could win but it would require much work.

It was a team that had gone 1-9 in 2004 and the program had gone 7-44 over the previous five seasons.

I sat down with Mark and his wife, Julie, that day and asked Mark if he thought a state championship was possible at Anderson. He said, “Why not?”

His love of his hometown and the school where he'd become an all-state tackle was readily apparent.
Within two years, Anderson had a winning record again and in Mark’s third season, the Bearcats went 10-0 and advanced to the second round of the playoffs. Anderson also won the school’s first district championship since 1972 and only the second in school history. In 2010, Anderson won another district title and advanced to the regional championship game for the first time since 1987, when Peach was in high school.

The next year, Anderson won its first ever regional championship, then made it all the way to the state championship game where it ran into maybe the best high school team I have ever seen, Bowling Green.

In all, Peach’s Anderson teams won four district titles (2007, 2010, 2013 and 2018), two regional championships (2011 and 2013) and a state runner-up.

The nature of high school sports makes it very difficult to stay on top, especially at a school like Anderson that is the only school in the county and was one of the smaller Class 5A schools. The cycles of nature mean the talent pool will fluctuate. Families relocate much more today than even 15 years ago.

And with social media, the criticisms and accompanying pressures are exponentially more. As with most, but not all high school programs, there was coaching turnover. Some decided they wanted to further their education, some left teaching, some moved on for other reasons and those positions were often filled by paraprofessionals who did the best they could but usually can’t devote the time a teacher-coach can. And it always struck me to see most other similar-sized schools with more assistant coaches. It makes a difference. Trust me on that.

But when I asked Mark about that, and the lack of good facilities, his answer was always, “We try to do the best we can with who we’ve got and what we have.”

I can’t say I agreed with everything Mark did as a coach. He didn’t always agree with what I wrote. And there were times I asked him stupid questions or he gave me answers that didn’t make sense. We are both human, ya know. But we always had a laugh over those the next day.

And I knew that Mark, a history buff, would often weave stories from America’s past into his talks with his team. It led to the team adopting the theme “Band of Brothers” from the Stephen Ambrose book and the miniseries of the same name chronicling the Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division in Europe in World War II. It was also a factor in the Bearcats being one of the first teams around to enter the field with one player carrying an American flag. To me, those lessons are even more important than blocking schemes or man coverage.

Over the last few years of my tenure at The Anderson News, I was aware of some local grumbling. I would see things on Facebook that were, in my mind, often unfair and ridiculous. But it was telling when opposing coaches or their writers would ask about those same rumors and could not believe them.

And I will say that when the word broke that Mark Peach had been let go at Anderson County, I got numerous emails and/or messages from around the state and from some of his former players basically asking, “What in the world is going on?”

My answer, unfortunately, was “I have no idea.”

With that said, I still remember something Mark said to me the day he was hired at Anderson. I nearly always close interviews with a question along the line of “Is there anything else you want to say?” He referred to his college coach at Campbellsville, Ron Finley showing Christ in his program. He said, “I want to do that everywhere I go.”

And one of the things he always did was have a prayer with his team after practice and after games.
I always had that filed away and for me the most memorable moment in Mark Peach’s career at Anderson came not on that night when he led the Bearcats on the field at Western Kentucky University for the state championship game, but was not quite two years later when Anderson hosted South Oldham for its 2013 home opener.

Earlier that week, Peach had been instructed he could no longer lead his team in prayer as some out-of-state group was threatening to sue the Anderson County school system and several other school systems in Kentucky for that practice.

Even though Anderson defeated South Oldham, 35-20, that night, Peach was in tears as he talked with me following the game. He noted it was the first time he had not been able to pray with his team since he had been in coaching.

(A side note: It was estimated that 500 people came out of the stands that night to pray with the team and eventually, things got worked out that a player or Peach’s father, Al, led the team in prayer after games.)

There were other times Peach confided in me, not as a writer but as a Christian friend. We prayed together on more than one occasion and I saw Peach in tears on other occasions.
As a writer, he was one of the easiest I have ever worked with. As a friend, he has emailed or texted with congratulations when I received an award and he was there when my mom passed away in 2018.

All I can say is, Thank you, Mark Peach, for being one of those guys who made my job easier, who understood that sometimes a writer had to address touchy subjects and for encouraging me to continue serving God in the best way I can.

Trigg County is lucky to have you.

Mark Peach (left) and I talk following Anderson County's heartbreaking loss to Highlands in the 2018 state playoffs. It was my last football game as sports editor of The Anderson News.