Dupree leaving Southwest, his alma mater, after 13 years for top job at familiar McDonough

 By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Joseph Dupree is going home.

          Well, from one home to another.

          The Maconite and Southwest graduate was named head football coach Monday night at McDonough in Henry County, not far from where the Dupree family has lived for several years.

          It really is a return for Dupree.

          His debut as a head coach was in 2012 at Henry County, going 1-9. In 2016, the result of some restructuring in the county turned Henry County High and Henry County Middle in to McDonough High and McDonough Middle.

          So Dupree is returning to a new version of that old school.

          A text to and voicemail left for Dupree Tuesday night wasn’t answered.

          A Macon Telegraph story last June on the resignation and departure after eight years of his wife Chendra Dupree as Central’s principal for a position with Atlanta Public Schools noted that she commuted to Central from Atlanta for more than a decade.

          “Although I own a home an hour away from Macon, I recently had to get an apartment in Macon,” she told the paper. “When work requires me to stay late, I stay in Macon to be closer and more available.”

          Chendra Dupree is the principal at the Herman J. Russell West End Academy, just southwest of downtown Atlanta.

          Since Joseph Dupree left after the 2012 season for the Southwest job, the Warhawks have had struggles similar to those of Southwest.

          Dupree will be the program’s fifth head coach since he left, with the 6-4 mark in 2023 under Rodney Cofield its only winning season in that span. The Warhawks didn’t make the playoffs that year, but did in 2013, and 2018, going 4-7 each year under Morris Starr.

          According to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association, Henry County/McDonough is 238-517-4 (31.6 percent) in 73 seasons while Southwest is 214-344-7 (38.5 percent) in 55 seasons. Dupree is 44-94 in 14 seasons as a head coach, 43-85 at Southwest.

          With this being the senior year at Southwest for son Chase Dupree, a standout basketball and football player, the potential of Dupree moving on after the 2025-26 school year was there.

          Dupree’s departure creates the third opening among Bibb County’s six public schools after a brutal 2025 season in which only Northeast managed a winning record, Central and Rutland went winless, and two of the six teams made the postseason. The six teams combined to go 18-47, 10 wins coming from Northeast.

          Westside’s Spoon Risper announced before the season that 2025 would be his last with the Seminoles, who finished 3-8. Risper is still in the job market, and the Seminoles haven’t announced his replacement yet.

          Central dismissed third-year head coach Jarrett Laws in December, after the Chargers’ second straight 0-10 season. Wilkinson County head coach and former Central assistant Jamoski Ward was hired just before Christmas.

          Dupree, a Southwest alum who played in college at Georgia and Georgia Southern, took over at his alma mater for the 2013 season, and it was a rough start: 0-10, the program’s fourth winless season since starting in 1970 and third since 2004-05.

          Four of Southwest’s seven GHSA state playoff trips came under Dupree, who managed three 6-5 seasons along the way.

          The Patriots are still looking for their first GHSA state playoff win, though, owning an 0-7 record. McDonough has two wins in its seven postseason trips.

          Central Georgia now has openings at Westside, Central Fellowship, Wilkinson County, and Washington County.