Jordan Wren’s job as the Union football coach got a lot tougher when the MHSAA closed schools on April 17.
Wren said he was just starting to learn players names when the school let out for spring break.
“It was going really well and then all of a sudden, you aren’t in school,” Wren said. “I was just about to put a name with a face for everybody and that’s really important. When you first start, it’s all about building relationships and that’s the biggest challenge for me so far.”
One of Wren’s main jobs was to fill out a coaching staff for the upcoming season. Last week, the Union school board approved the hire of Clay Pope as an assistant football coach.
“He was the first hire,” Wren said. “He’s going to coach the offensive line and be in charge of the run game. I don’t know if he knows that yet, but that’s what he’s going to do.”
Wren said he didn’t have a prior relationship with Pope but they knew a lot of the same people. Pope was a former assistant at West Lauderdale under former coach Stan McCain and coached with him in Mobile, Ala.
“He had spent some time at Northeast Lauderdale under Coach (Curt) Blackburn who spoke highly of him,” Wren said. “Coach Clay at West spoke highly of him as well. He needed to get closer back to his family and that’s something that I could deal with and understand.”
Wren said Pope’s hiring rounds out his coaching staff. Wren said Joey Ward and Zach Robinson were being retained from last year’s team while Jay Cassel was moving up to the high school after coaching in junior high at Union.
One thing that Wren won’t get to do is go through spring training with his new team.
“We were going to use spring to install the offense,” Wren said. “Now that’s gone but that’s not something that we can control. I’ll be curious about how the summer looks like. We’ll have to do as much of the install as well can this summer.”
