Prairie View to replace its head boys basketball coach

Prairie View boys head basketball coach Doug Nelson rallies his players during a time-out in his first year with the team. The Prairie View school board has voted to remove him as head coach. (Photo by Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

By Roger Sims, Journal staff

linncountyjournal@icloud.com

LA CYGNE – The Prairie View USD 362 school board on Tuesday, April 21, voted to  terminate its contract with head boys basketball coach Doug Nelson. The termination was effective immediately.

Since the end of the 2025-26 basketball season in March, district officials have been under increasing public pressure to replace Nelson.

That included comments on social media and an online petition asking district officials for his ouster. The petition has 141 signatures, and those signing included current students, former students, parents, grandparents and community members.

Nelson was recruited to the head coach position for the 2023-24 season. Nelson is not a teacher for the district, and his only contract with the district was for the supplemental coaching post.

Under Nelson, the varsity team’s record has been seven wins and 54 losses over three seasons. This year’s two wins came against Adrian, Mo., and the Christian Learning Center, neither of which were against Pioneer League teams.

However, the Buffalos have struggled even before Nelson was hired. The team’s last winning year was the 2014-15 season when the team placed third in the Frontier League and had 13 wins against nine losses. The Buffalos came close to moving beyond the .500 mark in 2016-17, but ended up with eight wins and eight losses.

“Our athletic director and principal do a full and thorough evaluation of every student activity and athletic program at the end of each season,” district Superintendent Chris Johnson said in a statement the day following Nelson’s termination. “We recently completed the evaluation of our winter sports and activities and determined that some changes needed to be made to better match the values of our community and the expectations we hold for coaches and sponsors.

“Our hope moving forward is for all of our student activities to be a positive experience for all of our students and sponsors.”

Although the number of losses figured into complaints and social media posts about Nelson, the issues included treatments of the players, prompting one grandparent to call it “adult bullying.”

Kimberly Mills, who has grown children who graduated from Prairie View and now has grandchildren attending school there, focused on Nelson’s behavior during the public forum of the board meeting, although she was quick to point out the team’s losing record.

“Prairie View is better than what we’re getting right now,” Mills said.

She charged that Nelson humiliated one of the players in front of the others by handing him deodorant. She said that with the recent suicide of a student and as many as one in five school-age children taking antidepressants, the lack of respect could have serious repercussions.

“My daughter put a video on Facebook where the F-word was used several times,” Mills said. “There is no call for that.”

She said Nelson’s response to that language was that is was not as bad as in football.

Mills also indicated that several of the players were already talking about going out for wrestling instead of basketball next year.

“We’re not in a good place,” she said.