PHOTO: Janet Wood (center) is congratulated by teachers and staff at the Mountain Home Kindergarten as they recently celebrated her birthday and retirement.
Teacher, coach, principal and athletic director, Janet Wood wore each of those hats during her 40 years in the Mountain Home Public School District.
After a total of 42 years in education, the past four spent as principal at Mountain Home Kindergarten, Wood says the time is right for her to step away from education to spend time traveling with her husband, Lou, and enjoying the grand kids.
Wood grew up in Melbourne, winning Class B and overall state basketball titles in 1973, played four years of college basketball at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia, and earned a Master’s degree in physical education in 1979.
She spent two years working in the Cotter School District before coming to Mountain Home as an assistant junior high girls basketball coach in 1981. She progressed to head junior girls’ coach, was elevated to head coach at the high school and won the 1986 Class AAA state title.
Her teams would play in four more finals during her 14 seasons as coach and she compiled a 516-112 overall record and a 355-89 mark in varsity games.
In 1994, Wood’s Lady Bombers lost to Fayetteville in a then-record, 8-overtime Class AAAA State Title game.
During a recent visit with KTLO’s Heather Loftis in an edition of Local Matters, Wood reflected on her time as head coach at Mountain Home.
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Wood’s teams were known for their hard-nosed defense and tenacity, but she bases the program’s success on something else.
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Wood also offered this insight on getting the most out of kids as a head coach.
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Wood chose to leave coaching and enter administration in 1999 as an assistant principal at Mountain Home Junior High, but came back into the sports world when she was named the first full-time, female Athletic Director in the state in 2004, a position she would hold until 2015.
PHOTO: Janet Wood spent 42 years in education, the final 40 with Mountain Home.
During her time at the helm, Mountain Home teams won 12 state championships in various sports.
Wood would leave that position to handle technology research, then finish her career with four years as kindergarten principal. She would be tasked with one of the toughest challenges of her career when schools shut down for in-person learning in March of 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
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The new kindergarten principal will be Kevin Roach, a former coach in the district as well who moved into administration. Wood offers these words of wisdom for the kindergarten moving forward.
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Janet Wood is a member of the Southern Arkansas University Athletic Hall of Fame (2012), the Arkansas High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame (2009) and the Arkansas High School Athletic Administrator’s Hall of Fame (2020).
PHOTO: Janet Wood waves goodbye to students on her final day as principal at the Mountain Home Kindergarten.
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