East Bernard ISD Athletic Director and Head Football Coach Jeremy Jenkins and his wife, Brandy, a junior high teacher in the district, were killed Saturday in a car crash on Texas 60 between Hungerford and East Bernard. The couple leaves behind three sons — Tyson, Gage and Jake — and a school community that was just weeks from opening a football season Jenkins had spent two years rebuilding.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the Wharton County Constable's Office Precinct 2 reported responding to a collision involving an 18-wheeler and a passenger vehicle on Texas 60 at West Bernard Creek. Texas 60 was blocked following the crash, and per Kulp Radio, the location was pinpointed to that stretch between the two communities. As of Sunday afternoon, authorities had not released the collision's time, cause, or information about whether anyone else was injured, and East Bernard ISD itself had not issued a public statement.
A Program Rebuilt From an 0-3 Start
Jenkins was preparing to begin his third season leading the East Bernard football program, having guided the Brahmas to a 20-7 record over his first two years at the helm. His second season, in 2025, was the kind that gets remembered for a long time in a small Texas town: East Bernard opened 0-3 before winning 10 of its next 11 games, according to the Chronicle's report. The Brahmas beat Poth, Lexington, and a previously unbeaten Tidehaven squad in the playoffs before falling to eventual state champion Newton in the semifinals — a Class 3A Division II run that reached the state semifinals for the first time under Jenkins.
East Bernard was scheduled to open its 2026 season at home against Sweeny on August 28. The Brahmas' program carries deep tradition in the community, having won 11-man state titles in 1977 and an undefeated run in 2012, though this season's opener now arrives under very different circumstances for the athletic department Jenkins led.
A Career Spent Building Winners
Jenkins was hired by East Bernard in February 2024, worked in education for more than two decades, and graduated from Cayuga High School and UT Tyler. Before East Bernard, he served as head coach at Mount Enterprise in 2019, then at Tenaha in 2020 and 2021, before taking over at Harmony High School, where he led the Eagles to the Class 3A Division II state semifinals in 2022 and a 10-3 record the following season. Across his head coaching stops, Jenkins compiled a 67-24 record over seven seasons, per the Chronicle.
Brandy Jenkins had joined East Bernard ISD as a junior high teacher. The East Bernard Athletic Booster Club confirmed the couple's deaths and described Jenkins as the community's leader, while calling Brandy one of the athletic program's biggest and most unconditional supporters. The booster club said the community's immediate focus would be supporting the Jenkins boys and their family, adding that football and wins do not matter compared with that support, and that the community would stand behind the boys, their family, coaches and athletes. In a statement described by the booster club, the group said coaches are supposed to live forever and support their community.
Condolences Pour In From Across Texas
Word of the deaths drew reaction from beyond East Bernard. La Grange ISD described the tragedy as a tremendous loss affecting East Bernard ISD and its athletic family, Cuero ISD said it was deeply saddened by the news, and Andrews ISD athletics extended condolences to the district and football program.
A Dangerous Stretch of Highway 60
The crash adds to a grim run of fatal collisions on State Highway 60 in Wharton County this year. Just weeks earlier, on July 13, a head-on collision between two tractor-trailers south of East Bernard killed two Bellville men, according to the Wharton Post — marking the second multi-fatal crash on that stretch within a single week. Days before that, on July 7, two East Bernard residents died north of Hungerford when their vehicle left the roadway, overcorrected, and was struck by an oncoming tractor-trailer hauling an oversized load; emergency crews closed the highway for six hours during that investigation, the outlet reported. Earlier in the year, a May 29 wrong-way crash near Jane Street in Wharton killed a 50-year-old driver, and a March 30 multi-vehicle crash at Bernstein Road left one person dead and two injured, according to data compiled by Grossman Law Offices. Four people died in crashes on the roadway during that single week in July alone. Under Texas Transportation Code Chapter 550, investigating officers must submit a Texas Peace Officer's Crash Report to the Texas Department of Transportation's Crash Records Information System for any crash resulting in injury or death, a process that will now apply to Saturday's crash as the Texas Department of Public Safety and Wharton County authorities continue piecing together what happened.
The exact cause and timing of the collision that killed the Jenkinses remain unreleased, and it is not yet known whether anyone else was hurt. For now, East Bernard is left to grieve two educators — one who rebuilt a football program from an 0-3 hole into a state semifinalist, and one who supported that program and its students as a newly arrived teacher — while raising three sons who lost both parents at once.
