By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
John Kirby found a different perspective on coaching Eastern Alamance’s football team on an interim basis.
So he’s going to coach another season for the Eagles.
“Going to give it another year,” he said. “It feels right.”
Kirby was the Eastern coach for 32-plus seasons before announcing his retirement in January 2024. He also was a teacher and athletics director.
So without those duties, the coaching gig seemed different in 2025, when he returned on an interim basis.
“You find out what it’s like to not teach and (be the) coach, and not to have to line the field (and other things as AD),” he said. “It kind of made it easy. It’s a whole lot different.”
Kirby was summoned back to the coaching position after the June departure of Mitch Mitchener, who coached for one season.
Eastern went 5-7 last year under the interim coach, losing 30-28 in the second round of the Class 5-A state playoffs to eventual state finalist Wilson Hunt.
“I felt like our team got better as the season went on,” Kirby said, then pointing out the close defeat in the postseason. “That competitive part of you doesn’t want it to end like that.”
The Eagles were 3-4 and in fifth place in the eight-team Mid-Carolina Conference.
Kirby, who turns 64 in April, could reach 300 career victories this year. After last season, he said principal Suzanne Simpson offered him the opportunity to coach in 2026. He wanted to wait a month or two before committing.
“He’s a known entity,” Simpson said. “The boys love him.”
Simpson said the stability should be good for the Eagles and that it wouldn’t be ideal to be in a coaching search at the same time as Western Alamance. She also noted the coach’s reduced role overall at the school.
“It’s just a totally different stress level for him,” Simpson said.
This weekend, Kirby is attending the North Carolina Football Coaches Association’s annual meetings in Greensboro. He said he has attended every year that the group has existed.
“I’m always learning,” he said.
