Warren Central Assistant Principal Preston Nailor has been named athletic director for the Vicksburg Warren School District.

The school district’s Board of Trustees Tuesday morning unanimously approved Superintendent Chad Shealy’s recommendation of Nailor as athletic director, replacing Lum Wright Jr., who retired in January to become business development director for Atwood Chevrolet.

“It was a very tough decision,” Shealy said. He said Nailor was the unanimous choice of the selection board composed of the Vicksburg and Warren Central High School principals, the head coaches of both high schools and coached from the two junior high schools selected to interview and recommend a new athletic director.

“I’m elated,” Nailor said. “I wanted to come back to Vicksburg and to be a part of the changes that have been taking place here. I look forward to working with the superintendent and the coaches.”

“I was incredibly impressed by Preston,” Shealy said. “He said, ‘There was no one in town that is more proud to be a Gator, and there’s nobody in this town more proud to be a Viking than me.'”

He said Nailor told him he looked forward to being able for the first time to apply his passion “to making us one district.”

Shealy said Nailor is from Vicksburg and a graduate from Vicksburg High School, adding besides his athletics background, Nailor went college on a choir scholarship, which Shealy said was an extra plus because the school system has moved the athletic director position to more of an activities director job.

“He’s well astute in competition and those sorts of things,” he said. “I think he brings that extra piece to the table that a lot of the other applicants really didn’t have.”

Nailor returned to Vicksburg as Warren Central assistant principal this year after working at Florence in Rankin County. He is a former assistant coach at Vicksburg High School, and was boys soccer coach at Ridgeland and Brandon High schools, winning state titles at both schools, and was a two-time all-star soccer coach.