LITTLE ROCK — It’s more than football at Cabot.
Much more.
Cabot scored 933.5 points during the 2010-2011 school year to finish third in the 10th annual Arkansas Democrat-Gazette all-sports rankings.
It was the school’s highest finish to date, an appropriate sendoff for long-time Athletic Director Johnny White, 59, who retired June 30.
White began working at Cabot in 1976 and had been athletic director since 1986.
During that period, the Panthers have won 246 games and two state championships under Mike Malham, the school’s high-profile football coach.
“From the outside, people think we are football school,” White said. “But inside, we know that we do for every sport everything we possibly can to make them successful. And we have had a lot of success. We’ve won state championships in bowling and cross country, volleyball, tennis. We have a great athletic program.”
Don’t forget the 20 or so state championships in golf, with White as coach, either.
Under White’s administrative watch, Cabot grew from a school whose conference rivals were Stuttgart and Morrilton in the mid-1980s to the third largest school in the state with an enrollment of 2,078 (grades 9-11), based on figures the Arkansas Activities Association used to classify schools in the 2010-2012 cycle.
Cabot’s facilities have kept pace with its explosive growth.
The school opened a $2.3 million field house/indoor workout area in 2005, replaced natural grass with artificial turf at Panther Stadium the following year and is scheduled to move into a new on-campus arena this fall.
White said the arena will seat approximately 2,400 and feature chair-back seating on the side and bleacher seating in the end zone for students.
“It’s a complete bowl,”White said. “We tried to make the angle as steep as we could going up, so you just feel like every seat is a great seat.
“I wanted to see that gym finished because I had worked so hard over the years. That had been in the plans for years.”
White said he plans to play a lot of golf in his retirement, but he’s not cutting his ties completely from high school athletics.
He begins part-time work next month as the Arkansas sales representative for Daktronics, a leading designer and manufacturer of electronic scoreboards, programmable display systems and large screen video displays using LED technology.
“I think I’m going to really like that,” said White, who was named Athletic Director of the Year for the 2010-2011 school year by the Arkansas High School Athletic Administrators Association. “I think it’s going to be a good thing for me.”
Former Arkansas State football coach Steve Roberts was named White’s replacement during the winter.
Sports, Pages 31 on 07/24/2011