Bob Jones girl’s soccer coach steps down
The second round playoff loss to Huntsville on Tuesday night was the final game for Bob Jones girls’ soccer coach Patrick Jacklin. Jacklin notified school officials earlier this year that this season would be his last at the helm and he will not return next season.
Jacklin started as a part time assistant in 1995 and assumed the head coaching job the next year.
“This is my seventeenth year at Bob Jones and I told Mr. Parker after last season I was going to do one more year,” Jacklin said after the game. “I’ve got an eight year old son who wants to go hiking, fishing, playing ball, and riding four-wheelers and I want to do all those things too.”
The program won one state championship under Jacklin, in 2003 when the tournament was played at John Carroll High School in Birmingham. The girls’ team has not advanced to the state tournament since then and that makes this loss more painful to Jacklin.
“The thing I hate about this loss the most is I have never seen a team that loved each other as much as this team does. These girls just really love each other. There is not any jealousy and they really jelled and that is what made us successful. I wanted it for them. And that is why it is so painful for them not to continue on through the playoffs” Jacklin said.
Bob Jones Athletics Director John Wilson said that Coach Jacklin will be missed but he understood his decision to step down to devote more time to his family.
“It’s going to be a hole to fill,” Wilson said. “Patrick has had a great rapport with the girls and the parents. He has been a very good person to work with, a very hard worker. I always admire his demeanor. He has a wonderful personality, very affable.”
“It’s going to be a tough task to find his replacement but Mr. Parker and I have been working on a plan-of-action to find the right person to head the program and keep it going,” Wilson said.
Jacklin’s final team finished 14-9 and was ranked in the top 10 most of the season, peaking at #9. The team had seven seniors, one of them Sammy Manzo has signed to play soccer in college at Birmingham Southern.
The girls will give Jacklin an official sendoff at the team’s banquet next week.
