By Zach Carter
A young Rhonda Donham is sitting at home. Since her father’s family is from Alabama, they are watching the University of Alabama’s football team on television. She did not know it then, but sports eventually would become her career.
Donham is the new administrative assistant for athletics at Delta High School.
At first she wanted to be a nurse and attended Ball State University. After having kids, she switched her dreams.
“School went to the side when I had my children, and then I decided to get into education so our schedules would be similar,” she says.
Before DHS, Donham worked at Winchester Community High School. Her duties included athletics and credit recovery. She has been working with athletics for 15 years. She credits her father for her enjoyment of it.
“Growing up, there were four of us girls,” she said. “My dad really liked sports and I was the youngest. I would sit and watch anything from boxing to baseball, like the Cincinnati Reds when they were really good.”
Donham passed her love for sports on to her children. Her oldest son, Travis, played football, baseball and wrestled all through high school where he lettered all four years in all three sports. Her middle child, Megan, played softball and lettered in all three years through high school (she graduated after her junior year).
Her youngest son, Wyatt, played baseball growing up but did not play sports in school. He was the outdoorsman of the family where he would hunt, fish, trap, ride dirt bikes and ride 4-wheelers year round.
She also talked about her three grandsons and that she “can’t wait to start throwing the football and baseball with them!”
When it comes to her favorite sports, she prefers football and wrestling.
Donham describes some of the tasks she does to assist new athletic director Mr. Tilmon Clark.
“I make sure there’s transportation for the away games, get the money boxes together, the roster sheets, and communicate with other schools,” she says. “I just make sure that it runs smoothly. I handle stuff behind the scenes.”
One of the main reasons DHS hired Donham was because of Clark. As soon as he was hired, he reached out to her.
“Over the past three years while I was at Monroe Central, she was at Winchester, so we would often have to work together with different events for our schools,” Clark said.
The two actually knew each other before their careers. They first met when he was a student at Winchester Community High School and she was his class sponsor.
Clark describes Donham as “a rock star…DHS is fortunate to have her.”
