Southeast Arkansas College hires veteran coach Jamie Voight for men's basketball

Southeast Arkansas College hired Jamie Voight to lead its men’s basketball program, leaning on a coach with 15 years of head-coaching experience as the school continues to build its identity in the NJCAA. The move gives SEARK a veteran voice at a moment when the program is still young, still growing and still defining what its standard will be.

Voight arrives from the University of the Southwest, where he spent four seasons after taking over a team that had gone 0-14 the year before his arrival. By his third and fourth seasons, he had pushed the program into the Red River Athletic Conference championship game, the kind of climb that suggests SEARK is not just hiring for stability but for a faster rise in the standings. That track record fits a college trying to win while it is still laying the foundation.

SEARK’s timing also matters. A local report said Voight will be the second men’s basketball coach in school history, and the 2026-27 season will be the program’s third year of basketball competition. Chad Kline, SEARK’s first men’s basketball coach and athletic director, resigned in May 2026 to take the men’s basketball job at Fort Scott Community College, leaving the school to reset its direction as the program enters a new phase.

Voight’s background runs deeper than one turnaround. The University of the Southwest said in its 2021 announcement that he graduated from USW in 2011, earned NAIA Daktronics Academic All-American honors that same year and later completed a master’s degree in secondary education from Eastern New Mexico University in 2014. It also said he spent 10 years as a high school varsity boys basketball coach and compiled a 184-92 record, a résumé that points to both on-court results and the academic perspective junior-college programs expect from their coaches.

That blend may be exactly why SEARK moved now. In the NJCAA, a coach has to do more than draw up sets. He has to stabilize a roster, help players progress academically and put them in position to move on. Voight said he was honored and excited to take the job and wants to build a program that competes at a high level while helping young men grow academically, athletically and personally. For a school with limited history but rising expectations, that sounds less like a slogan than a blueprint.

The Bears already have evidence they can compete. SEARK finished the 2024-25 regular season 19-8 overall and 9-7 in Region 2, broke its program scoring record in a 113-93 win over UA Cossatot and closed the regular season with an 83-74 victory over reigning national champion National Park College. With men’s and women’s basketball now part of the college’s athletics offerings and home games at H.O. Clemmons Arena at UAPB, Voight inherits a program with traction and a chance to move faster than a typical rebuild.