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JACK BYRD, PEARL RIVER HEAD SOCCER COACH AND camp director, will enter his second season at the helm of PRCC’s men’s and women’s programs this fall. He served as assistant coach under then-head coach and 2010 camp instructor Josh Hess in 2007, but resigned to accept a position with the PRCC Alumni Foundation during the 2008-2009 school year. After Hess resigned in the spring of 2009, Byrd pursued the head soccer position and was the unanimous choice for the job. In his first season, he guided the Lady Wildcat squad to their second-ever MACJC state championship and was named the MACJC’s Women’s Coach of the Year. Byrd is a 1999 Picayune High School graduate where he was a standout athlete as a three-year letterman on the Maroon Tide soccer team and place kicker on the football squad. His football talents earned him a scholarship to PRCC where he kicked and punted for the Wildcats in 1999 and 2000. Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., signed Byrd following his PRCC stint and he lettered both seasons with the Tigers. It was his tenure at OBU that brought him back to his first love — soccer — as he served as athletic director for the Booneville (Ark.) Boys & Girls Club in 2004 and 2005 and as commissioner of the South Logan County Soccer Clubs, while coaching 17-year-old and 19-year-old select programs. Byrd graduated from OBU in 2004 with a bachelor of arts degree in political science with minors in sociology and physical education. While kicking at Ouachita, he was selected the Gulf South Conference’s “Player of the Week” on six different occasions. At Picayune High, Byrd was named first-team All-State by The Clarion-Ledger for the 1998 season and played in the Bernard Blackwell All-Star Classic in the summer of 1999. From there, he headed to PRCC where he was a two-year letter winner and earned second team All-MACJC honors as a sophomore and a berth on the South Division squad in the 2001 MACJC All-Star Game. Byrd’s father, Richard, is an automobile mechanics instructor at PRCC.
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