CHS assistant calling it a career

Ron Hubby, who is retiring from coaching after 28 years, played college football at Texas A&M after graduating from Clovis High School in 1972. Photo by Eric Kluth

After nearly three decades of coaching, Clovis High assistant football coach Ron Hubby has decided it’s time for a change of pace.

Hubby, an all-state running back at Clovis in the early 1970s who later played at Texas A&M, turns 50 in June. He said he will continue teaching biology at CHS. He has spent the past four years helping with the Wildcats’ sophomore and junior varsity football squads.

“I’ve had a great time, but after 28 years it’s time to do something else with my spare time,” he said. “It’s been a great 28 years, and I’ve coached a lot of great players.”

Hubby, whose first wife died of multiple sclerosis in 2002, said he wants to spend more time with his new wife, Joy, and his new grandson, Anthony, born to daughter Katie just over three weeks ago.

“People don’t realize the time commitment in football,” said CHS athletic director Dale Fullerton, a Wildcats assistant before taking over the AD duties last fall. “Ronnie’s certainly been a big contributor here, and he’s the type of person who’s going to do a good job at whatever he does. I figure that right now his priorities are (outside) football.”

A 1972 CHS graduate, Hubby was a standout running back for the Wildcats, rushing for 1,800 yards as a senior and earning first-team Class 4A all-state honors. At Texas A&M, he helped the Aggies share the Southwest Conference championship with Arkansas and Texas and earn a berth in the Liberty Bowl during his senior season.

Most of his coaching career was spent in Texas high schools. He returned to Clovis six years ago and joined coach Eric Roanhaus’ staff in 2000 after two years coaching at the junior high level.

Brooks Jennings was Hubby’s basketball coach at CHS, and said he was the definition of a team player.

“He was the kind of player you like to have around,” Jennings said. “Obviously, his best sport was football. We’ve had a lot of really good running backs here, but he would be up there among the best of them.”

Fullerton said when he son, Cal, was playing at Midwestern State, the parents of a punter on the team who had played for Hubby in high school told him “how much they thought of Ronnie and the type of person he was.”

Cal Fullerton has helped coach the CHS sophomore and JV football teams the past few years with Hubby.

“I know the kids think a lot of Ronnie,” Dale Fullerton said. “I feel very fortunate that Cal got to work with him. I think he’s learned a lot from Ronnie.”