After football coach’s 4 children injured or killed in wreck, MGCCC rallies to help
The Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College family is rallying around a member of the Bulldogs’ football staff who is dealing with the tragic loss of a son and injuries to three other children after a Saturday night wreck.
MGCCC receivers coach Bam Bryant’s 19-year-old son, Braylon, died Saturday evening in a single-vehicle wreck on U.S. 49 in Stone County.
At about 7:26 p.m. Saturday, the Mississippi Highway Patrol responded to the scene near Perkinston. A 2009 Honda Accord was traveling north when it left the road and hit a tree before catching fire, according to the MHP report.
One of Bryant’s children also sustained life-threatening injuries and two others had moderate injuries, according to MHP.
MGCCC football coach Jack Wright, who drove to the scene of the wreck on Saturday night, and others on the Perkinston campus have done what they can to offer support to Bryant and his wife, Christina.
The MGCCC athletics department helped put together a GoFundMe page that had raised almost $11,000 for Bryant and his family just before noon on Tuesday.
“That’s really just a result of over the course of the 36 hours after the wreck where dozens of community members, teachers, administrators and other coaches on the campus calling me, the athletic director and the president asking what they can do to help,” Wright said. “Without knowing what the recovery schedule was going to be, and one of the children at that point was headed to surgery, and there may have to be another one, we decided that money is what we can do in the short term.”
“Nobody is more capable than Bam and Christina. They’re physically strong, young and healthy adults that are capable of taking care of a lot of stuff, but a lot of people wanted to help. This is the quickest thing we could do.”
Word spread quickly to Wright and others at MGCCC about the tragedy.
“Everybody who’s got kids, that’s one of the worst things that can happen to a parent,” Wright said. “To get a phone call that all four kids were in a wreck, that’s tough to fathom.”
Bryant, who is in his fourth year at MGCCC, played college football at Arkansas before starting a coaching career that has taken him to Millsaps, Delta State and Concord University.
“He’s an incredible coach and a huge part of our success,” Wright said. “He does a fantastic job of coaching and he’s also a great person. He teaches those guys things that will make them better husbands and better brothers. He brings great energy every day. I can’t say enough about him.”
