{"id":271634,"date":"2026-04-29T17:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/271634\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T17:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:42:15","slug":"former-southlake-mayor-resigns-from-thesa-board-amid-sex-offender-hire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/271634\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Southlake mayor resigns from THESA board amid sex offender hire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Southlake Mayor John Huffman has resigned from the Texas Home Educators Sports Association board, according to\u00a0Amy Smith of WatchKeep<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

THESA has been under fire this past week after reports surfaced that its head baseball coach, Tommy Whiteman, is listed on the Texas Sex Offender Registry until 2030 for online solicitation of a minor. The organization also\u00a0included a waiver\u00a0<\/a>in its sports registration packet for the upcoming school year, requesting signatures to grant Whiteman permission to coach the team given his past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Huffman is\u00a0no longer listed\u00a0<\/a>on THESA’s website as the board member overseeing baseball and basketball. According to Smith, Huffman hired Whiteman as the baseball coach. THESA has not responded to Chron’s request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to a statement received by parents of THESA athletes and published by Smith, “The current Board was not involved in the original vetting of Mr.\u00a0Whiteman, and any Board Members who were involved in the vetting and approval process of Mr. Whiteman are no longer on the Board. When the remaining Board assumed leadership, it believed in good faith that appropriate vetting had already taken place, including due diligence regarding what was not permissible in light of his past. Mr. Whiteman and his family have been upfront about incidents that ultimately resulted in his status as a registered sex offender, and through their website and testimony believed that his situation was communicated transparently to the families involved. To be clear, Mr. Whiteman is no longer associated with THESA and the Board has not received any allegations of sexual misconduct or inappropriateness during his time coaching with THESA.”<\/p>\n

Huffman served as mayor of Southlake from 2021-2024 and was a city council member from 2015-2022. He is still a member of the board of directors for the Southlake Chamber of Commerce.\u00a0<\/a> Huffman was backed by\u00a0the Dallas Mavericks’ owner<\/a> and casino tycoon Miriam Adelson\u00a0as the Republican candidate for Senate District 9 in an\u00a0attempt to gain sports gambling legalization in the state senate. Despite being the most well-funded candidate<\/a>, Huffman failed to make the runoff, taking third with 16 percent of the vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Southlake Mayor John Huffman has resigned from the Texas Home Educators Sports Association board, according to\u00a0Amy Smith…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16469,1704,85744,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-271634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-chronsports","tag-chronstaff","tag-chrontexas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}