Coaching Carousel: Mount de Sales' Yates moves back to Memphis in unique situation; Macon County makes another change

By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

            Gray Yates is back walking in Memphis.

            Yates came to Macon back in 2015 from Harding Academy in Memphis to join the staff of Keith Hatcher at Mount de Sales.

            A little more than a decade later, Yates has returned to Memphis.

            He resigned in early January for a unique change in jobs while keeping the same career.

            Yates is the general manager for football – for now – at PURE Academy in northeast Memphis. It’s an all-male boarding school that has around 50 students, but has recently moved to a new location and is undergoing expansion and renovation.

            Quite the change from the Catholic high school atop downtown Macon several miles from its athletic facilities.

            While the vacancy has been a quiet one, it may be filled very soon, and possibly by a name familiar to Central Georgia high school football.

            Yates was contacted by the father of a player he coached at Harding more than a decade ago, the father now the chairman of the board at PURE, which stands for “Progressing Under Restraints and Extremes”.

            The offer came in early January, and Yates and wife Lindsey, who got married last June, were in Memphis by Martin Luther King Day.

            There’s not a lot of football on Yates’ plate right now.

            “Right now, we're kind of operating as a staff, building a staff and just kind of all working together,” he said. “But I'm the one organizing it and I'm the one doing all the head coaching responsibilities.”

            PURE was founded in 2016 by Melvin Cole, who has been the program’s head coach and remains connected to it. It has drawn funding from a variety of local municipalities with a mission based on combining athletics, academics, and agriculture for at-risk Memphis area boys,

            The expansion will lead to room for 250 youngsters within a few years. Yates said the competition level is similar to Class 5A and 6A in Georgia. PURE went 3-7 in 2025, playing local schools as well as Mississippi teams.

            It has gone from an independent into the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, that state’s version of the GHSA. There are still growing pains.

            Recent snow in the area led to some off days from school, which helped.

            “I've kind of gotten our schedule organized, I've gotten our daily calendar organized, recruiting,” Yates said. “You're trying to compete at a 6A 5A level, and you don't have a prospect sheet. You don't have all your guys ready on the HUDL.

            “We were missing a lot of organizational pieces that I was able to do because we were off of school.”

            Yates was unable to pull Mount de Sales – which didn’t release word of Yates resignation nor word of its search - out of its general football funk of this century during his four seasons as head coach.

            The Cavaliers have had only nine non-losing seasons since 2000, four coming in a short stretch from 2017-2020 under Keith Hatcher, now at ACE Charter. But Yates was a key staffer during that run, which included a 10-1 mark in 2019.

            There’s no pulling teeth at PURE, where students must compete in football or basketball. Yates is building the school’s first track program this spring.

            “I see them at 7 in the morning for weightlifting, where I just have to go get them out of bed,” Yates said. “Nobody going to miss a workout, ever. I'm in school with them and then we practice for days a week.”

            Yates managed only an 8-34 record as head coach, but said the experience as head coach was more positive than some might expect.

            “I never received a parent email, never parent meeting, anything about that or any of that,” he said. “I think our parents understood.

            “But it’s nice to have an opportunity where the entirety of the school is behind what we’re doing. It’s awesome.”

Macon County releases Williams after two seasons

            For the second time only a few years, the desire for a different vision or direction has led to a coaching change at Macon County.

            Kurt Williams still isn’t quite sure what the direction or vision is, a few weeks after he was told he’d not be back for a third season.

            “We kind of sat down at the table and really just, you know, where administration’s vision wanted to go and where my vision wanted to go didn’t really align,” said Williams, who was an assistant at Macon County during the short three-season Larry Harold era which included Roquan Smith at linebacker. “Just kind of needed to part ways.”

            The Bulldogs went 12-11 under Williams, winning Region 6-A/Division II in 2024 and missing out by a point in the region’s tiebreaker format of repeating. Macon County was the second seed, and lost 35-7 to Charlton County in the first round of the playoffs.

            “I come in last year and we win the region title, and we’re a point away from winning another one this year,” Williams said. “We didn’t have a great year, but we’re a ball bouncing once or twice away from being 8-2 and region champs.”

            Macon County went 5-1 after an 0-4 start, and two of the early losses were by a t0tal of three points.

            Williams’ predecessor Dexter Copeland was told he wasn’t returning – publicly, he resigned - after the 2023 season in which Macon County went 10-3. Then-new principal Jamal Harris made that decision.

            Copeland was the third-winningest coach in Macon County history at 76-32 in nine seasons, with a state title and four region championships.

            Williams was hired by then-superintendent Marc Maynor,  whose contract was not renewed, and he was replaced in July by Johnathan Roberts.

            Copeland spent 2024 and most of 2025 on the Stratford staff as a community coach, along with former Bulldog player and assistant Courtney Williams. They and the Eagles parted ways in early October, Stratford going on to win its first state championship since 2004.

            Kurt Williams was already looking ahead to 2026 with great anticipation, in part because the Bulldogs returned running back Noah Parker, who committed to Georgia in November.  

            “We’ve got the whole offense back, literally,” said Williams, who went 22-39 in six seasons at Lanier County.  “We got all this momentum going.”