He posted a 44-54 record from 1999 through 2007, winning five district championships and three sectional championships. Brookins was a football coach at Central for 11 years, nine as the head coach

Payne

My love for football, it's pretty simple. It's not anything complicated. I love football. I spent a lot of time at Central High School coaching. I felt the need to be a part of that again, so I stepped up and am ready to take on the challenge.

It was a little bit of both.

One of the things I will emphasize, not that it has not been emphasized before, is that the effort, speed and tenacity that you play the game of football. Those will be the things. No matter what kind of offense you run or what kind of defense you run, they need to have those three things in mind or it's not going to work.

The assistant coaches already had a meeting with the kids earlier this week, so they already met with the kids. The ninth grade group was met with by the assistant coaches on the ninth grade level. So those meetings have already taken place. They've already given them information as far as weight room and calendar of events for the summer leading up to the actual practice starting.

I will meet with the students again Tuesday of next week, once they have heard this and read this. A lot of them will know me already. But those who don't can put a face with the name.

We do interface quite a bit over there, and a lot of their students are our students. We share student populations back and forth. With my tenure in the community and in the program, my name, and I don't mean this boastfully, but there are a lot of families within this community where even their younger siblings will refer to me as coach Payne, even prior to knowing me. I prefer coach Payne over Mr. Payne. I'll tell the kids that.

I was actually assistant head coach when Jerry DeMit first came in.

Most of my coaching has been on the defensive side. My original emphasis and positioning that I played has been on the offensive side. Even on the collegiate level, I coached defensive line and linebackers. Then for my last couple years there, I coached the offensive line.

I will coach the offensive and defensive lines come next year because I feel those positions, that's where everything starts and ends, with the lines up front.

My commitment to this institution and my commitment to this football program will be the same. I would not even consider this position if I didn't feel strongly about the staff at this institution and the football staff that is presently in place, that I could do both jobs and do both jobs well.

There is very few things that I will do unless I can do them well.

I've lived in Cape since I came here to play football at Southeast Missouri State in 1981. The only year I was not living in Cape Girardeau was in 84 when I was a graduate assistant at Western Illinois University.

I'm originally from Olney, Ill.

Coached under 3 coaches at SEMO and 3 at Central. About 23 to 24 years of coaching experience total.

46 years old

My daughter goes to school there, and she's a ninth grader. She wanted to throw the shot and discus so I volunteered my services.

That's more of a father commitment than a job commitment. That's a dad being a dad that has some expertise and wanted to help out his daughter.

Been seven years.

When I moved into administration, I officially got out of coaching. But I continued to coach up until when coach Demet left and coach Brookins was hired, that's when I moved to this facility. When I moved to this facility, that's when I removed myself from the football program. For those five years I actually volunteered and continued to coach, even though it wasn't a paid position.

Since then, I've been officiating football. It's kind of unique because now as an official, you see the game of football from a different perspective than as a coach. But at the same time, you're still involved in the game. You see the contest played.

I love the game of football and I wanted to stay involved in the game of football. So the officiating gave me the opportunity to do that.

Not any different than it was to go the other way. I said after all those years of coaching football, it took me a few years to come to grips with wearing stripes.

Most football coaches don't know the rules of football. But when I became an official, I learned the intracacies of the rules of the game of football. When you're a football coach, you only know enough about the rules to gain a strategic advantage. Wehn you become an official, you've got to understand all the minute parts of the rules in order to enforce them and do a good job as an official.

The only thing I will guarantee the public is thatI will coach the kids and they will play hard. We will work hard to be as good as we can possibly be for not only Central High School and the community, but more importantly the kids.

McDonald

After the committee reviewed all the applications that had come in, they really weren't happy with an of the applicants. There were issues with each of them, either not qaulified to teach or not enough experience. They really didn't just want to put anyone in that position because they really feel the football program needs to be back on track to get our school a winning team.

After further review and discussions with Mr. Payne, he said he would like to take on that responsibility and they felt comfortable enough doing it. They discussed his qualifications with the other coaches and the other coaches were comfortable with it. Dr. Cowan is behind Mr. Payne as well. He was the choice we could come up with now. We'll see what happens. We'll let him do his job and at the end of the season, we will evaulate him and the program and see how things stand at the end of the year.

It's completely up to Mr. Payne, depending on how long he wants to undertake the program and after evaluating the program and seeing what progress we've made if he's the right fit. If it's something he wants to undertake, then it most certainly could be a long-term thing. But if after a year he decides that being the director of the CTC, plus the head football coach is too much of an undertaking or the program hasn't progressed the way we feel, then the process will start all over again.

Rich Payne is a professional individual and he knows what his limits are. I don't believe he would have accepted this position if he didn't think he could do both equally well.

Cowan

around 25 applications

nominating committee about six

We went on for such a long time that it changed a little bit over time.

We had been conferring with Rich throughout the process because Rich is prominent in the athletic community throughout Southeast Misouri. We had used him as a resource. And from those conversations as a resource began to involve an interest on his part. It suddenly became, 'Would you consider the possibility?'

Coach Payne has been associated with the Cape public schools for a significant period of time. He knows the culture. he knowsour community. He knows the history of our football program. I don't have any doubt that he can hit the ground running literally and help get us on track as soon as we possibly can.

We're behind. The search process has been long and thorough, and it's going to take someone who can really step in immediately and get us back on schedule and start making plans for summer camps and get our kids excited. We wanted to make sure that could before school finishes next week when we have all the kids still here in the building.