AMARILLO, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Before Eric Mims Sr. envisioned leading young athletes under the bright lights of Friday night football, he dreamed of becoming the next Stuart Scott.

“I said I was gonna be a broadcaster,” said Mims, who now serves as head football coach at Palo Duro High School. “But once I got into broadcast journalism at Eastern New Mexico University, I realized I wanted to be home every night. I wanted to put my kids to bed. And that wasn’t going to happen in the media business.”

His pivot to coaching came as no surprise to his mother, the late LaNelle Mims, who was the first girls' track coach at Palo Duro back in 1974. She had long told her son that he was destined for the sidelines, even when he insisted he was chasing a bigger paycheck.

“When I called her and said

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