Winchester approves Flowers as new head coach

Don Flowers is coming back to the Western Illinois Valley Conference.

Flowers, who coached the past two seasons at Decatur Eisenhower, was hired as the West Central football coach by a unanimous vote at the Winchester School Board meeting Tuesday night. He is expected to be hired by the Bluffs School Board at a meeting tonight.

Flowers would teach driver’s education and physical education at Bluffs, pending his hire tonight.

“I like the conference to begin with,” Flowers said. “When I went to Virginia, I came up from Olney, and that’s one of the reasons I went up there. I knew a lot of the people.”

Flowers has previously coached at both Virginia and Pleasant Hill, teams that play in the WIVC. “I don’t really know a lot about (West Central’s) players, but I remember when I was in the conference they were really competitive and the community was behind them,” Flowers said. “I think it’s just a matter of getting the kids involved and getting the numbers up.”

Flowers’ teams struggled at Eisenhower during his two-year tenure. The Panther football team was 1-8 in 2006 and 0-9 in 2007.

“Football has been really down and it was a tough situation,” Flowers said. “It’s just been a really tough situation here with the numbers.”

Flowers also served as an assistant baseball coach at Eisenhower, and was the head coach at Virginia. He said he’d be interested in helping out in other sports at West Central.

He hasn’t officially been asked to do so, however. “At this point, I don’t know about anything else for sure,” he said.

The Bluffs School Board meets tonight. For any coach to be hired to coach a West Central athletic team, both schools must approve the hiring.

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