Golf tees into new season

Tupelo High School’s golf teams started their season with a new coach in late February. Sharon Rial stepped up as coach this year when Mark Enis stepped down to become the assistant principal at Lawndale Elementary School.

Rial said the golf team’s biggest rivals are “Madison Central and some of the private schools.”

Although the teams have to get their averages down some, they have a big group of junior guys who are “hopefully going to step up and lead,” said Rial, who added that her expectations for the season are high.

“With the tournament this weekend, we started out with a better average than what they did last year at this time,” Rial said. “Hopefully we’ll just continue to improve and finish one of the top two or three teams in the state.”

Tebow tackles Tupelo

On April 12, Tim Tebow was the keynote speaker for the Blue Mountain College Fundraising Gala at the BancorpSouth Arena.

The youngest of five children to Baptist missionaries, the former NFL quarterback became the first sophomore ever to win the Heisman trophy while at the University of Florida. He also won two NCAA national championships while attending the university.

Murphy named new THS band director

Rick Murphy has been named head band director at Tupelo High School. He will start July 1 and replaces Tim Matlock. Murphy, who has nearly 40 years of experience, previously worked at McGavock High School in Nashville, Middle Tennessee State University and North Pontotoc High School.

Assistant band directors at THS include Darius Fant, Jeremy Greenwood and Taylor Sparks.

Bowling’s Russell headed to UAB

Senior Taylor Russell has been recognized for her bowling talents with a scholarship to the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

“The UAB coaches have been watching me bowl for a couple years now,” Russell said. “They expressed interest and they contacted me about coming for a visit. This is when they talked to me about scholarships would they be willing to offer me.”

Russell’s stats captured the interest of other college coaches, but she is definitely committed to attending UAB when she graduates in May.

“I didn’t take any more college visits because I knew that UAB is where I really wanted to go.” she said. “I had other coaches from other schools who were interested in me, but most of them were National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics schools and I really had my heart set on attending an NCAA school.”

– Keywanna Rogers contributed to this report