Bobby Bolding resigns as White Hall football coach, remains as AD for now

By Nate Olson | Photo by Jimmy Jones

The grind of juggling the roles of athletic director and head football coach at White Hall High School caught up with Bobby Bolding. 

Bolding, who has coached for 33 years and served as a head football coach/AD at four programs, resigned from his coaching position at White Hall this week. For now, he remains the athletic director, he said. Bolding, who has worked at the school for nearly three years, said he is waiting on a decision from the White Hall school district administration to determine if he will continue to fill the AD role.

“I don’t know all the details; I know there was a school board meeting last night,” he said. “I would like to stay as AD, but if they keep the jobs combined, I understand. If they keep the jobs combined, I will find a job in education as an AD or football coach, but I can’t continue to do both.”

Bolding said he told White Hall superintendent Doug Dorris a year ago that filling both positions was wearing on him and that he might want to only fill the administrator position.

“This has all been in the works,” Bolding said. “[Dorris] knew this was coming down the pipe.” 

Bolding said the strain of guiding the athletic department and football team through COVID protocols and working on a new field house project that was recently completed wore him thin.

“I knew I wasn’t doing justice to the AD and football positions,” he said. “I wasn’t a very good AD in the fall or a very good football coach in the spring. I take a great deal of pride in doing a good job for the people I work for.

“All of it was just overwhelming, and it got to a point where I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep.”

Also this season, Bolding was the White Hall offensive coordinator and special teams coach filing in for former White Hall assistant Antonio Lovelady, who took the Dumas head coaching job last spring.

Bolding, 55, managed to finish his three-season tenure with a bang. He led the Bulldogs to the Class 5A state championship game last week. White Hall lost to Pulaski Academy 51-19. The Bulldogs’ only other loss was also to PA (63-28) during 5A-Conference play. With one week left, the Bulldogs are No. 10 In the SBLIve Arkansas Top 25 rankings. 

“It was a really fun year,” said Bolding, who finishes with a 27-12 record at the school. “[The title run] was probably unexpected by some, including myself, since we were a little undersized, and we didn’t have a lot of depth playing guys both ways. The one thing was, we didn’t get any guys hurt, which helped. We had a great coaching staff.

“We met our goal, but we weren’t good enough to beat PA. They were the better football team, and they executed and didn’t make the mistakes we did. They deserved to be state champs.”

This was White Hall’s first appearance in a state title game since 1987. Bolding has coached at Mark Tree, Stuttgart and Pine Bluff and has earned title game berths at each stop, except Marked Tree. His teams won one state title at Stuttgart and two at Pine Bluff. 

Breaking the news to his players might have been harder on him than them.

“Fans don’t understand that players are very resilient,” he said. “They think they win because of them, and they are right. They are on to the next coach and focusing on winning, which they should be. 

“The hard thing for me is, I love the kids and being around them. If I am just the AD, I won’t have as close of a relationship with them as I had in the past. That’s something I’ll miss.”

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SBLive Sports is the official digital content partner of the Arkansas Activities Association (AAA).