Arrows mourn loss of coaching legend James “Booty” Sloan

By Nash Nunnery

Clinton High School football coaching legend James “Booty” Sloan, 81, passed away on January 16, 2022. The following is a tribute to Sloan’s legacy as the Arrows’ all-time career leader in wins and the significant impact the veteran coach made on his players and the Clinton community.

James “Booty” Sloan didn’t replace a legend – he became one himself.

In two different stints as Clinton’s head football coach, the folksy Sloan posted a 104-38 record, including a sparkling 62-14 mark from 1972-1978, his first tour of duty and the period considered by many to be the golden era of Arrows football.

Though smallish in physical stature, Booty Sloan’s coaching prowess and his heart for people was gargantuan.

The Shannon native led the Arrows to three Overall Little Dixie Conference championship crowns, six North LDC titles, a Division 6-5A title and an appearance in the 1987 MHSAA 5A South State championship game.
In a March 2009 interview with this writer, Sloan said the memories he and wife Wanda made in Clinton remained vivid, although the couple moved back to their native Lee County in 1991.
“My goodness, coaching and living in Clinton was the highlight of our lives,” he said. “Wanda would move back down there tomorrow. My family grew up in Clinton, and I am grateful for our years there.”

Sloan’s priorities in life were faith, family and football – in that order. But make no mistake – there wasn’t a high school coach in America more fiercely competitive.
Just ask the shortstop for a Clinton rec league softball team who got turned upside down by Sloan breaking up a double play attempt during a game in the mid-1970s.
That shortstop happened to be one of Booty’s football players.

Sloan’s proclivity for hard work began in the northeast Mississippi hill country, where he grew up on a farm tending to milk cows and nurturing soybeans. It transcended to his intense study of the game of football, be it breaking down film or scheming a new defense.

According to Wanda Sloan, the wives of his assistant coaches would often call her during the season asking when to expect their husbands home from practice. Better put dinner back in the oven, she’d tell them.

Nobody was going to outwork James Sloan. Football games were won with preparation during the week, not on Friday night, the coach surmised.
Coach Sloan once said winning games boiled down to three things – no turnovers, no turnovers, and no turnovers.

“If you win the turnover battle, you’ll most likely win the game,” he said. “Coaching is simple – you tell the players to ‘stay after it’ for four seconds each play, and you will be successful. And, of course, you must have kids that love the game.”
“We had that at Clinton.”

Brian Richardson played safety on Sloan’s undefeated 1977 Overall Little Dixie Conference champions, the only team in school history to play a season unblemished. He valued early morning film sessions with the coach, a man who was the consummate teacher and who paid attention to the smallest detail.

“Coach Sloan’s success came from hard work and due diligence, but it also came from fair play and personal integrity,” Richardson said.
Now living in North Carolina, Richardson related a story that backs up his assessment. It seems the junior safety and Sloan were reviewing film before the 1976 Warren Central game. The phone rang in the football office, and Booty took the call.

“I heard him answer the phone, ‘James Sloan,’ and then there was silence for about ten seconds,” said Richardson. “Coach said ‘hold on a minute,’ and I heard the door shut.”
Richardson said that Sloan proceeded to read the riot act to the person on the other end of the line.

“It was a Clinton parent who had been spying on Warren Central practices that week, and he wanted to tell Coach what [WC coach] Lum Wright was up to,” recalls Richardson. “Well, Coach Sloan, in his own way, let the caller have it with what he thought about his ‘inside’ info and how he got it. Coach was having none of it.”
“Afterwards, he looked at me and said, ‘Brian, hard work and honesty are more important than winning a game.’ Coach didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t have to – Booty Sloan lived by hard work and honesty.”

Winning championships endeared the legendary coach to Clinton folks. But Sloan also integrated himself into activities beyond Roy Burkett Field.
He served as the CHS athletics director, led the school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter, taught an American Government class and was a beloved Sunday School teacher, although his outstanding achievements on the field often overshadowed those duties.

Despite winning an MHSAA 5A state championship with Tupelo, Coach wasn’t fond of the state playoff system. He once told me that the now-defunct conference alignments, particularly the Little Dixie Conference, produced more epic gridiron battles.

“Good gracious, the Little Dixie was a bloodbath every week,” he said. “Today, high school teams play each other without any real history between the schools or towns. It’s not the same.”
Sloan said there was a state-wide mystique about Clinton and Arrows football.

“It was the best place in the USA to coach high school football,” he said. “Dadgone, if a player couldn’t get charged up to the Marching Arrows [band] playing ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in the fourth quarter, he didn’t have a pulse.”

“Athletically or academically, there was not a better situation for a coach than Clinton.”

Former Clinton school district superintendent Dr. Virgil Belue hired Sloan in the spring of 1972. A young administrator himself, Belue recalls he had a Herculean task in replacing another CHS coaching legend – Roy Burkett, whose name was affixed to the school’s stadium on Lakeview Drive.
The young Booty Sloan checked all the boxes that Belue desired in a coach.

“I knew Coach Sloan had a great football intellect, but he also was a man of great character, committed to academics, and possessed a great work ethic,” he said. “I had set the initial interview for a Sunday, but Coach Sloan said he couldn’t do it.

“Turns out, he taught Sunday School in New Albany and didn’t want to miss. That told me all I needed to know about his character.”
Confidence in his own skin was a Sloan trademark. Take the story of the origin of the Booty nickname.

It came about because of Coach’s love of cowboy boots as a child and his mother’s failure to get young James to remove them, even at bedtime.
“I mean, you couldn’t get those doggone boots off my feet,” he told me a few years ago. “You could go to downtown Shannon [his hometown] today, and they might not know who James Sloan is. But Booty Sloan? They’d know him.”

The echoes of past victories and championship seasons at Roy Burkett Field still reverberated in Coach’s heart before he died. The wonderful feelings about Clinton and its people, he told me not long ago, will last forever.
The same can be said for those fortunate enough to have known James “Booty” Sloan.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Freelance writer Nash Nunnery was the starting left guard for the 1972 Overall LDC champion Arrows, Coach James Sloan’s first CHS team.