By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
B.J. Condron has a pretty good familiarity with several aspects of soon-to-open Southeast Alamance High School.
That’s part of what intrigues him about his newest opportunity.
Condron will be the school’s first athletics director, coming from a teaching and coaching position at Orange High School in neighboring Orange County.
“Just really excited to get started and build something,” Condron said in an interview with The Alamance News. “Establishing a brand-new culture is an exciting and a daunting task.”
Before going to Orange, Condron had been a physical education teacher and boys’ basketball coach at Hawfields Middle School, which will largely have students heading to the new high school.
Southeast Alamance is scheduled to open in August for the 2023-24 school year.
“I’ve been coaching for several years now and looking for something to further my career and be an athletics director,” Condron said.
Condron has a connection with Eric Yarbrough, who’s the designated principal at the new school. They were on the faculty together at Hawfields Middle School. Then when Yarbrough was principal at Orange, Condron was on his staff.
Condron, 43, lives in Haw River. He’ll officially begin July 1 at Southeast Alamance after finishing the school year at Orange. Yet he’ll work on several tasks regarding Southeast Alamance on a contracted basis for the next several months.
Among those duties will be hiring coaches. He and Yarbrough will be involved in that process, though he said there’s no timetable about when those coaching appointments will begin.
Condron, who received conference Coach of the Year honors for Orange in the 2016-17 season, is the North Carolina Basketball Coaches Association District 6 coordinator. He’s department chair of the physical education program at Orange High School, according to an Alamance-Burlington School System release.
On Saturday, he attended the Eastern Alamance/Southern Alamance baseball game. Students from those schools will comprise a large part of Southeast Alamance’s student body.
“We’ll have some students from Eastern,” Condron said. “We’ll have some students from Southern.”
Condron graduated from Southern Wayne and was a 2002 East Carolina graduate.
He said he’s uncertain if he’ll hold a coaching role at Southeast Alamance. That might depend on the make-up of the teaching staff and needs that arise. If so, it would be basketball, and likely on the girls’ side, he said.
“It will depend on how things play out,” he said.
Before his time from 2008-13 at Hawfields, Condron had been an assistant with the boys’ basketball team and the junior varsity boys’ basketball coach at Orange. Upon returning there, he intended to rejoin the boys’ staff until he was given a chance to coach the girls’ team.
“I thought it was a great opportunity to build something up,” he said. “That’s kind of the same thing with the new school.”
Orange was 14-13 with a first-round exit in the Class 3-A state playoffs – with a loss to his alma mater in his hometown – during the Panthers’ recently concluded season. Condron should be familiar with Alamance County schools because Orange is in the Central Carolina 3-A Conference along with Eastern Alamance, Western Alamance and Williams.
Southeast Alamance will be in the Mid-Carolina Conference, which includes Cummings and Graham.
