Prairie Grove Considers Cameron

PRAIRIE GROVE — The head baseball coaching job at Prairie Grove was expected to be filled this week.

Prairie Grove school board’s consent agenda for its Tuesday,

May 21, meeting showed former coach

Mitch Cameron among a list of hires.

Cameron’s hire was designated as High school teacher/head baseball coach.

Cameron coached the Tigers seven seasons before resigning in May of 2015 to take the head baseball coaching position at Rogers Heritage. During his tenure at Prairie Grove from 2009-2015, Cameron led the Tigers to four 20-win seasons, six state tournaments, and four consecutive appearances in the State 4A baseball semifinals. Two of his former players, Jalen Beeks (Class of 2011) and Ty Tice (Class of 2014) were drafted by Major League organizations and remain in professional baseball.

During four seasons at Heritage Cameron was 28-75.

Prairie Grove had been without a head baseball coach since former coach Chris Mileham, Cameron’s successor at Prairie Grove, resigned in February.

A citation was issued Feb. 22 to Mileham by Lt. David Faulk, school resource officer, in connection with endangering the welfare of a child, a Class B misdemeanor. Mileham was accused of allowing a student to shock another student with a stun gun, according to police.

Prairie Grove Prosecuting Attorney Steven Parker decided not to prosecute, saying charges didn’t meet the definition of Arkansas legal code 5-27-207 which states, “a person commits the offense of endangering the welfare of a minor in the third degree if the person recklessly engages in conduct creating a substantial risk of serious harm to the physical or mental welfare of a person known by the actor to be a minor… ‘serious harm to the physical or mental welfare’ means physical or mental injury that causes: (A) Protracted disfigurement; (B) Protracted impairment of physical or mental health; or (C) Loss or protracted impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.”

“I just don’t think getting shocked by one of those stun guns is going to cause you to use the loss of an arm or a leg,” Parker said. “That’s the reasoning behind it. Getting shocked with a stun gun, I just don’t see it meeting that definition of substantial risk to bodily injury.”

Jed Davis, assistant principal at Prairie Grove Middle School, was appointed interim coach. The Tigers went 1-7 in conference and finished 11-13 overall in 2019.

The Enterprise-Leader filed a

Freedom of Information request Monday morning with Prairie Grove Superintendent of Schools Reba Holmes asking for names of those who had submitted applications for the head baseball coaching job as well as the head softball coaching job.

Monday evening, Holmes replied by email that she was going to be out of the office for a few days and would respond later.

According to a posting shown on pgtigers.org, applications were accepted from Feb. 27 through April 26. Licensure requirements included having a valid Arkansas license for secondary coach, teaching license and CDL.

Additional trainings and/ or experience that may be helpful were demonstrating successful head coaching experience, and proven leadership skills. Shifts were shown to be full-time with location at Prairie Grove High School.

Cameron