Coach Lum Wright was a legendary championship football coach who led programs at Ed Couch High in Elsa, Texas, Mission High in Mission, Texas, Gilmer High in Gilmer, Texas, Warren Central, Port Gibson, and Chamberlain Hunt Academy. A native of Yokena, Lum graduated from high school in Vicksburg and was attending East Mississippi Community College. A member of the 123rd Medical Collection Company of the Mississippi National Gurd, Coach Wright was called to active duty with the U.S. Army in Korea in 1950 and served until 1952. He achieved his college degree from Mississippi College in 1954 when he began his amazing 46-year coaching career. Offered a job at Jett High in Vicksburg, Lum opted to start coaching football in Texas at Ed Couch High in Elsa, Texas. He moved on to coach at Mission and Gilmer, Texas, before returning to become head coach at Warren Central in 1971. Warren Central, at that time, had only been opened since 1965 and did not have a winning season until Coach Wright arrived. In his first season, he led his team to a record of 9-2 with a 34-0 win over St. Aloysius in the famed Red Carpet Bowl. His second team had a setback with a 3-5-2 record, but he never had a losing season after that. Lum used a power running game and stifling defense to pace Warren Central for the next 14 years to a record of 125 wins, 29 losses, and 3 ties plus 5 Little Dixie Conference championships and three undefeated seasons in 1974, 1978, and 1979. After stepping down as Warren Central head coach in 1984, he was soon back on the sidelines at Port Gibson. In his first season with the Blue Waves, his team won five of their last seven games to finish 6-5. Over the eight years Coach Wright coached at Port Gibson, his teams won 66 games. In 1992, he retired from coaching again, but emerged as head coach at Chamberlain Hunt Academy. His Wildcat squads won 35 games in his first five seasons, more than the team had won in the previous 22 years combined. Coach Wright retired in 2000 at the age of 70 with an incredible 361 wins, one of the winningest coaches in Mississippi high school history. He coached 10 teams in Mississippi that had 10 or more wins in their season. Coach Lum was a longtime MAC member and was a head coach in the 1975 Bernard Blackwell All-Star Football Classic. Besides the numerous coach of the year awards, Lum has been inducted into five different halls of fame in two states. In 2004, he was inducted into the National Federation of High Schools, one of only 9 inductees from the state of Mississippi as of 2023. He was the first coach from the state to earn that honor with the NFHS. Coach Wright passed away on September 8, 2016.