Jonathan Burroughs
Westwood High School announced last week the hire of Winnsboro native Jonathan Burroughs as the Redhawks’ new baseball coach.
Burroughs played shortstop and second base for the Fairfield Central High School Griffins, graduating in 1995 and continuing his baseball career at North Greenville College and the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg (now USC-Upstate), where he graduated in 2000. Burroughs has served as an assistant coach at Mauldin, Greenville and Loris high schools and currently teaches history at Kelly Mill Middle School. Westwood marks his first head coaching position.
“I feel like I’m getting in on the ground floor,” Burroughs said, adding that he hopes to add a B-team to next year’s varsity and junior varsity program. “There’s plenty of talent out there.”
Burroughs said his baseball philosophy is also his life philosophy, which he hopes to instill in his baseball program. He said he considers himself a teacher first and a coach second.
“There are valuable life lessons that can be learned through athletics,” he said. “The goal is not only to be successful athletes, but successful citizens. When you’re faced with adversity, you bounce back and say ‘What’s next?’.”
Burroughs, who is engaged to Tiffany Ann Luffman, succeeds Westwood’s inaugural baseball coach, Curtis Johnson.
