In January 2023, Anderson School District One selected Stan Yarborough as the athletic director at Wren High School.
Wren is like family to Yarborough, who has more than 20 years of overall experience as an educator.
“The community is amazing… The students are amazing,” Yarborough said. “At Wren, they welcome you right in and you’re part of the Hurricane community; that’s been the cool thing to see over the years—developing those relationships with the local community.”
Yarborough has also served as assistant athletic director, director of gameday operations and coached various sports at Wren, and prior to that, at Palmetto High School. He’s seen his teams win numerous championships—most recently the State Championship in boys basketball and Upper State Championship for girls basketball.
Sports has been a part of Yarborough’s life since he was a youngster, and he feels blessed to be able to mentor high schoolers as he was mentored in his hometown of Marion, South Carolina.
“Just seeing young people have success, overcoming adversity and doing things they never thought possible, but pushing them so they don’t give up, so they get the payoff in the end; they get the attention in the end; they get the glory; they make the memories,” Yarborough said.
Yarborough feels that his graduate program at Anderson University opened doors for successive leadership roles at Anderson School District One. He’s thankful for helpful faculty and staff who helped him as he was balancing work, family and school.
“We had some great professors. A lot of the graduate professors were different superintendents or principals in the local school system, so we were able to have a lot of meaningful discussions in our class,” Yarborough said. “The biggest thing is it opened up doors and allowed me to further my career… I got a chance to step up to the admin side as well and get a taste of what the administrative responsibilities were like.”
Yarborough is gratified to see so many of his former Wren students who enrolled at Anderson. And there are also strong family connections.
“My niece is a senior volleyball player at AU; she’s getting ready to graduate this May. My mother-in-law is a graduate of Anderson,” said Yarborough, who hopes to see more in his family become Trojans.
The Anderson University College of Education
