Jacksonville, AL – PV’s Hood takes teaching job at Calhoun County Career Tech, but will coach Pleasant Valley’s cross country and boys basketball teams
By Al Muskewitz
Brad Hood is moving into a new teaching position within the county come the new school year, but it won’t impact his coaching standing at Pleasant Valley High School. In fact, it might even serve to energize him more.
Hood has just been hired as the building construction instructor at the Calhoun County Career Tech after 15 years at Pleasant Valley Elementary. While the new position would allow him to coach anywhere in the county, he will remain the Raiders’ cross country and boys basketball coach.
The only thing he has to pass on is outdoor track, which he has turned over to Ronnie Preston.
The new teaching position actually merges his two passions. He gets to stay in coaching while imparting his knowledge and experience in the building trades to prepare the next generation of students to enter the work force.
“I’m teaching and I’m teaching math still, but I’m teaching something I’ve had a passion for personally that I still do every day,” said Hood, who has a successful construction business outside of the classroom. “You’re teaching kids who are really interested and choose to be there versus teaching a lot of kids where you’re having to be a motivator a lot.
“The goal is when they graduate the program to be able to have their builder’s license.”
From a sports standpoint, the new position, with three two-hour classes, should give him more time to prep his teams.
The Raiders are dropping down to Class 2A for at least the next two years, a move that should be good for both of his programs.
The basketball team will be young with a “pretty solid” starting five led by Kolby Battles and Kyle Smith. It is coming off a good camp in Guntersville where it went 3-3 with wins over 2A Collinsville, 2A Cleveland and 5A Crossville, and played 4A White Plains tight for a half once they got back home. They also will play in a three-team area where at the bare minimum they have to beat out one team to advance.
Both cross country teams should battle with Cold Springs for the state title. The boys were runnersup in Class 3A last November. The girls finished tenth.
“Even if we were in 3A, (the PV boys’ average time) would’ve won the 1A and 2A easily and we would’ve barely beat Bayside in 4A last year; we just ran into a buzz saw with Providence Christian last year,” Hood said. “Our guys will be competitive in 1A through 4A; I think (the move) helped the girls a lot.
“The girls, they could definitely be a red trophy. If they got a red trophy that’d be a huge accomplishment, but I think they can do it. The boys, it’s going to come down to us and Cold Springs, I really feel like. We’ve got our top five back and we averaged 17:23 last year. Cold Springs averaged like 18:12. Our kids are working.” [*** read more sports stories]
Cover photo: Pleasant Valley coach Brad Hood (R) and White Plains’ John Moore share a laugh during a 2020 race.
