Star City's Vereen Selected To Lead RHS Football Team

RISON - Chris Vereen, who has led the Class 4A Star City Bulldog football program for the past six seasons, has been named the new head football coach for the Rison High School Wildcats.The Cleveland County School Board approved Vereen's hiring during its regular monthly meeting Monday night.Vereen replaces former Rison Wildcat Coach Caleb Carmikle, who resigned March 30 to become head coach at Class 4A Heber Springs High School, which is Carmikle's alma mater.This will be the second consecutive season that the Wildcats will have a new head coach. Carmikle arrived during the Spring 2023 semester after the departure of Clay Totty, who guided the program for 25 years. In his six seasons at Star City, Vereen compiled an overall record of 33-32. He guided the Bulldogs to the state playoffs in five of those six years, going 2-5 in the post season. The only time one of his Star City teams did not make the playoffs was this past year in 2023.In a telephone interview Wednesday morning, Vereen said it was Rison's storied football history that led him to step down from a Class 4A school to led the Wildcats, who play in Class 3A."Honestly, the tradition of it all," Vereen said, noting that he had experienced it on the opposing sideline when he coached at Gillett. He said Rison and Gillett were in the same conference for a couple of years while he was coaching the Wolves.Vereen said he visited with the team on Tuesday, and told them it was time to put last year's 3-8 record behind them and return the Wildcats to the winning tradition they are accustomed to. He said many of the players were disappointed in their performance last year, including the seniors, and were ready to turn the page. "You could tell they were ready to get going," he said.Vereen will officially start his new contract at Rison on Monday, April 22. He said his first order of business will be testing the returning players for strength and speed to assess what he has to work with, and "see how they are going…