CARLISLE FOOTBALL: Uhiren getting back into groove

11:14 am - July 06, 2016

By Donna Lampkin Stephens

Carlisle Independent

If you look, the signs are everywhere that Mark Uhiren is back home.

Uhiren, 57, a 1977 graduate of Carlisle High School, returned in April as the Bison’s new head football coach.

“It’s the simple things,” he said, mentioning the campus flagpole at the south end of the football field in memory of sisters Sylvia and Jeannie Elmore, Carlisle students who died in a car accident more than 40 years ago.

“They were older than me, and I remember the day it happened,” Uhiren said. “Walking by the flagpole one day, it just hit me — golly, I’m a whole lot more connected to this than I ever dreamed I was. That caught me off-guard.

“I know hundreds of people go by there, and it doesn’t even register with them. But holy moly, it does with me.”

Uhiren played for the Bison in the 1970s, went on to the University of Central Arkansas and then coached for 32 years before spending the last two as dean of students at Marion Junior High. He began his coaching career with 12 years at Wynne. From there he took his first head coaching position at Hoxie for three years and then moved to Lonoke, where he spent one year as an assistant before taking over as head coach for a few years until he left for Marion, where he coached from 2002-13.

He hasn’t been to a game at Fred C. Hardke Memorial Field since he graduated, although he’s seen the Bison play a few games through the years, including their five trips to the state championship game at War Memorial Stadium.

They’ve never won an Arkansas Activities Association-recognized state title, and neither has he.

Uhiren had come close to returning home twice earlier, but things didn’t work out until the aftermath of Jack Keith’s resignation early in the spring semester.

“I wasn’t even going to try for it at first,” Uhiren said. “But my wife said, ‘If you don’t try, you won’t know. You’ll go around thinking the rest of your life you’d wished you’d done it.’ So I gave it the last shot — Lord willing, if that’s the direction I’m supposed to go in, it’ll work out, and if not, it won’t.’

“I let it go, and everything started clicking and fell in place real quick. Next thing I know, April 11, I’m here.”

Upon his arrival, he filled in teaching algebra and physical education classes while getting to know his new players. He called the spring experience “one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

“Everything was very hectic and the kids are trying to get out of school and you’re trying to figure out how the school runs,” he said. “It was a heck of a deal. When I first came in, I was wondering if I did the right thing. I thought, ‘Ooh wee — I don’t know about this.’”

Despite the rockier-than-expected start, he started making connections.

“Once you have the opportunity to meet people — I knew their grandparents,” he said of today’s CHS students. “Their parents were little kids when I was in high school; I watched them play ball. Once you got to that, and the kids began to find out, ‘You know my grandpa and my grandpa knows you and they know your parents’ — when that began to happen, things eased up really quick.

“Just letting them know I’m not a terrible fellow. I’m tough on them, but I care about them. That’s one thing that’s different — coming home, you have the added pressure to perform, not so much the winning as taking care of all of them and making sure the program prospers.”

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Uhiren, the only child of Bill and Joyce Uhiren, who still live in Carlisle, said he was “born in the clinic at Carlisle” and raised here.

He played football and ran track for the Bison. At 165 pounds, he moved from quarterback to offensive guard/defensive tackle when he got to high school.

“I wanted to play more than I was playing, so I was the permanent quarterback back-up and first-string guard,” he said. “I did get my chance at quarterback my junior year when the starter got hit in the back and bruised his kidneys. I had to go in and play quarterback. We went to the playoffs that year and beat Earle, the defending state champion, in the first round.”

He earned all-conference honors as a senior.

He left home to attend what was then State College of Arkansas (now the University of Central Arkansas). He thought he was too small to play for Ken Stephens’ Bears, but he chuckled as he remembered that his claim to fame was helping to talk Stephens (this reporter’s husband), who taught him in a Theory and Practice of Coaching Track class, into giving Vaughn Edwards a scholarship.

Today, Edwards, a Bison a year younger than Uhiren who played at UCA from 1978-81, ranks first in UCA history in rushing yards per game with 113.1 yards; second in career rushing (3,620 yards); second in all-purpose yards (4,303); second in all-purpose yards per game (134.5); third in rushing attempts (733); fifth in rushing touchdowns (30); and sixth in touchdowns scored (31).

“(Stephens) had not seen him, and we went home one weekend and got the tapes and brought them back,” Uhiren said. “It was pretty neat that Vaughn goes up there and makes it and does great things. We were all proud of that.”

After earning his undergraduate degree in physical education with a minor in English, Uhiren stayed at UCA for graduate school, and in 1983, he took his Master of Education degree to his first job at Wynne.

“I pretty much always knew I wanted to coach,” he said. “I think if I’d stayed a little more in the science area, I might have gone into physical therapy. But I had an appointment through the college (to observe) a physical therapist in downtown Conway, and they were treating some people with burns. I didn’t have a clue they did that — saline baths, hollering and yelling. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I can’t do that.’ I thought physical therapy was all about fixing broken ankles. Nowadays, this PT/athletic training, that’s exactly what I’d have done.”

He was on the staff when Bill Riley led the Yellow Jackets to a state championship in 1986 before Don Campbell arrived a few years later. He worked under Campbell for eight years.

“When Coach Campbell came in, he made it a point to talk to everybody individually,” Uhiren remembered. “I told him my desire was to be a head coach.”

His first opportunity came a few years later at Salem. He was offered the job, but before committing, he got a call from Hoxie.

“I stopped there and interviewed after I’d interviewed at Salem,” he said. “Hoxie called me that night. I chose Hoxie because at the time my wife (the former Cindy Schafer from Carlisle) was working in Jonesboro.”

He landed at Hoxie in 1995 and spent three years there.

“We established what I wanted to do,” he said. “I kept Coach Campbell’s system. When I first got there, they’d won six games in five years, but they were really supportive and wanted the program to be as good as they could get, so they helped get our weight room set up, and we started the same way I’ve done everywhere. The kids bought in and got really, really strong. We worked hard and got tough and began to win some games.”

That included a memorable 7-6 win over Corning, and by the third year, the Mustangs reached the playoffs.

But one of his young twin daughters developed lupus and was treated at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, so the family looked to get closer to central Arkansas. He interviewed for the head coaching position at Lonoke, where his wife had family ties. Billy Dawson got the job but called him at Hoxie and asked him to join him to coach the offensive and defensive lines.

“That was kind of odd, but it worked real well,” Uhiren said.

The pair worked together for a year before Dawson took the Sheridan job, and Uhiren took over the Jackrabbit program. A few years later, he got a call from Marion.

“I was completely happy (at Lonoke); no problems to amount to anything,” he said. “I told them at Marion that I was fine, but they started talking about coming back to play eastern Arkansas schools, being in the same conference with Wynne. I liked that conference and was real familiar with all those people.”

His son Chad was about to start his junior year at Lonoke, so they had a man-to-man talk.

“I told him, ‘If you’re comfortable here and want to finish, we’ll stay,’” Uhiren remembered. “‘But if you’re willing to go and accept the challenge of going somewhere else and meeting new people, going to a new school, we may try that.’

“I gave him about a week to think about it, and he said, ‘If you want to go, Dad, let’s go.’”

Again he started his building project in the weight room.

“The numbers weren’t that great — 30 or 40 or 50 — but they kept growing, and we went from (Class) 4A to 5A to 6A/7A,” he said. “When I left, we were playing Cabot, North Little Rock, Little Rock Central, Mountain Home, West Memphis.”

He resigned as football coach in 2013 and became dean of students at Marion Junior High.

“I thought that was it,” he said of his coaching career. “I had my hands full (with administration), and we were still going to ball games. I kind of got the itch.

“I never really lost the desire to coach, but I always had in my mind that it had to be the right situation. I wasn’t going to bounce into something I didn’t need to be getting into.”

He said family reasons again drew him back toward central Arkansas, and when his alma mater called, he couldn’t resist.

His high school coach, Joe Gasaway, who remained in Carlisle after his 11 years atop the Bison program, said he thought Uhiren would be successful.

“He was a very intense young man; he worked hard and was a real competitor,” Gasaway said. “He gave everything he had at all times. I visited with him a few minutes the other day and wished him the best. It’ll take him a little time, but I think he’ll do a good job for them.”

But there is a bit of a burden coming home.

“When I was coming up through school, one coach came back; he was in the same graduating class as my mom, and it just didn’t work,” Uhiren said. “These things happen. I keep that stuff in the back of my mind. I don’t want to be a failure or perceived a failure.

“Somebody made a statement, ‘He’s come back to take us to the promised land.’ I don’t really like that statement. I’ve come back here and acquired a job just like anybody else, and down deep in my gut, I want to make it the best I can make it. I’ve always had this thing that if you walk away from the job, can you look at yourself in the mirror and say it’s better than it was when I came? If it is, you have to be OK with it.

“But I really do have that itch. I would like to be the one that got them to the final and won it. Winning a state championship would be great.”