Jerome Gibson
Jerome Gibson has been involved in sports all of his life. His father was a coach and although he died when Jerome was only three, his love of sports was passed on. Growing up in Nowata, Jerome was a pitcher and a shortstop on his summer baseball teams. Even though Nowata did not offer high school baseball, Gibson’s favorite and best sport, he was a three year letterman in football and basketball, quarterback of the football team and captain of the basketball team.
Gibson graduated from Nowata High School in 1957. He attended the fall semester at Oklahoma State University before transferring to Northeastern Oklahoma A&M in Miami where he played on the basketball team. After graduation from NEO he continued his education at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, but injuries ended his participation in college sports. He graduated from NSU with a Bachelor of Science in Education in 1961 and earned a Master of Education degree from NSU in 1969.
After teaching and coaching stops in Alluwe, Delaware and Copan, and a three year period working in his wife’s family business, Gibson took a teaching and coaching position at Bartlesville Central Junior High in 1976. The following year he became assistant baseball coach at College High and then head coach in 1978. Gibson coached the Wildcats for four years until the consolidation of College High and Sooner High in 1982 and then was named as head coach of the new Bartlesville Bruins baseball and softball programs.
During Gibson’s fifteen year tenure as head baseball coach in Bartlesville his baseball teams won the 1980 Class 3A and 1985 Class 5A State Championships. In his nine-year stint as head softball coach his teams won the 1982 and 1984 Class 4A State Championships.
Jerome and Sandy have two sons, a daughter-in-law, three grandchildren, and one great-grandson. Their sons, Mike and David, are both graduates of Bartlesville Sooner High and the University of Oklahoma. After OU, David earned his law degree from the University of Texas and works in Austin. Mike is a CPA and works in Oklahoma City. He and his wife Sherry live in Norman. They have three children, Mandy, Melanie and Connor, and a grandson, Camden.