Union City Rotary Club - Weekly Bulletin & News

Today, we will see some familiar faces, as the Union City Rotary Tour group, consisting of Will Arnold, Chambry Callicott, Katey Crews, Kayla Eason, Paige Fisher, Whitney Smith and Andrew Speed, return with an exciting review of their recent trip abroad. The students were accompanied by Jacob Cross and his wife Emely.

The trip of a lifetime began for these young people, who are all members of the Class of 2010 at Union City High School, June 19 when the eight students and two chaperones departed Union City for a drive to the airport in Memphis. Late that afternoon, they boarded a plane for the flight to Minneapolis/St. Paul, changed planes and headed east to London on an overnight swoop through the skies.

After arriving in London and checking into a hotel, they began their tour of England’s heart that Saturday morning. Another overnight in London again on Sunday allowed them even more time to visit famous landmarks and experience a microcosm of the world as they walked the streets of London. The following days were spent traveling to places such as Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland.

The trip was all free to the students through grants from Union City Rotary and the tireless work of several Rotarians, including Leland Davis, Clay Woods, Jacob Cross, Kevin Herrell, Richard Graham, Gary Houston, Tim Shanks, and gracious outside help from Glenda Caudle, Vickie Wilkinson and Wennie Logan.

Next week, we welcome back Union City High School Head Football Coach Darren Bowling. Coach Bowling came to Union City in March of 2008 after a short stint at Dyersburg High School, in his first year at U.C.H.S. he compiled a 10-2 record and this year has gotten off to a 2-0 start.

Darren is not a new face to Obion County, as he held the Head Position at Obion County Central High School from 2003 -2007, and carried that team to some of their most successful seasons in school history. He has coached in Mississippi and Louisiana before coming to Tennessee. He holds an overall record of 119-64 in his coaching career and his teams have had one State Runner up and four semi final appearances.

He graduated from Greenville Christian School, Greenville, MS in 1986, received his BSE degree from Delta State University in 1991, Majoring in Physical Education K-12, with a Minor in Social Science and Drivers Education. He returned to Greenville Christian School in 1993, as Head Varsity Football Coach and boys and girls Track Coach.

Some of His personal achievements include, in 2005 he was Tennessee Titans State Coach of the Week, 2003 State AA Coach of the Year, boys track, State AA Coach of the Year girls track and 1995, 1999 and 2001 District 2-AAA Coach of the Year.

Last week, Head UTM Football Coach Jason Simpson left us with some exciting expectations for the current season for the UTM Skyhawks and some bad news for their opponents.

Coach Simpson opened last Thursday with a big night, sporting a 56-0 win over Iowa Wesleyan, so he was still on a rather large high Friday, as he poked a few fun remarks toward our president. He spent a few minutes going into the background of the mascot for UTM, that being a Skyhawk, and said that there was only one other university in the nation which uses the same mascot.

Coach then reveled that after last season he was approached by a couple of Universities wanting to know if they might have a chance of employing him as their Coach, saying that they told him they thought he had gone about as far as he could at UTM. He said "I don’t believe that, and I believe we have only scratched the surface here at U.T. Martin". He said "in the last three years UTM has defeated six top twenty-five teams in SCS Football, and have the second most wins in the conference in the last three years also, we lost two of them to Eastern Kentucky in the last play of the game in 2006 and 2008, and the seven conference losses were lost by an average of 3.2 points". "The team had produced 29 All-Conference players in the last 3 years and 6 All-American players in that same time period, which brings on national recognition for the players", he said. He also talked about pre-season ranking, saying that the team, in some polls, were ranked as high as 13th in the country and as low as 21st, this brings team pride seeing their name mentioned in this status. Coach said "we’re trying to generate some tradition and some pride really fast at UTM, and I think we are on the right track".

Coach shared some of the information on the top players this year and some of their accomplishments, and the recognition they are getting.

He ended by expressing his gratitude to the people in our area for their support of the athletics at UTM, through their generosity and loyalty.

Coming Attraction

Sept. 18 - UCHS Head Football Coach, Darren Bowling

Sept. 24 - Rotary Fish Fry, Tentative

Sept. 25 - No Meeting

Birthdays

Sept. 11 - Chuck Doss

Sept. 12 - Ron Green

Sept. 13 - Jim Harrelson

Sept. 14 - Ron Cooper

Anniversaries

Sept. 14 - Justin and Meredith Shaw

Sept. 15 - Jim and Connie Prather

Sept. 15 - Art and Phoeba Ross

Sept. 15 - Ken and Jean Ussery

It’s Football Time in Tennessee!!!

Tonight

Union City Hosts Huntingdon

OCCHS Hosts Cape Central, MO

So. Fulton Hosts Fulton City

Sept. 19 UTM @ U. of Memphis

Tomorrow, Tennessee Volunteers Hosts UCLA

Kick-off - 3:00 PM Central Time

Return to Weekly Bulletin News Index page.