The family that coaches together stays together.
OK, so that’s a little corny. But at the Weir household in Colquitt County, it rings true. Mell and Patti Weir, both teachers in the Colquitt County system (Mell teaches PE at Funston Elementary while Patti teaches seventh grade social studies at Williams Middle School), coach a variety of sports the seasons of which span the entire school year. There aren’t many days or nights when one or both of the Weirs are at a game, a meet, or a practice of some kind. It’s a hectic schedule but one to which the Weirs have adapted well.
Mell Weir coaches cross country, swimming, and track. He serves as head coach for cross country and swimming; he’s an assistant with the track team. How did he end up coaching so many sports? “I have a background in cross country and track,” he says. “With swimming, there was just a need there. I knew a little about swimming and the team was in a bind. I was able to step in and help out.”
Mell says he enjoys the endurance sports because there aren’t as many coaching decisions to make as far who competes and who doesn’t. “If you go out and beat the other person, you’re better,” he says. At the same time, however, there is still a lot of strategy, tactics, and technique involved in his sports. Like with any high school sport, you have to coach the kids you have. And some are better at certain aspects of the sport than others are. For example, some are better at pacing themselves over longer distances while others are stronger and more suited to short, fast efforts. Coaches must evaluate the kinds of runners they have then tailor their training and race strategies to their athletes. “It’s more than just going out and running,” says Mell. “You also have to know your runners and train their strengths.”
Swimming is the most technical of Mell’s sports. To be a good swimmer, an athlete must be in shape. But he or she must also be very technically sound; conditioning won’t make up for bad technique in the pool. That also makes coaching swimming more challenging. Mell was familiar with swimming and had spent some time in the water as an adult racing triathlons. However, training for a triathlon and training high school kids for swimming-specific events are two different things. Mell researched swimming techniques extensively when he became Colquitt County’s swim coach. He also talked to other coaches at all levels in order to learn as much as possible about the sport. “This is just my second year of coaching swimming. We’ve improved tremendously. We’ve already had a girl who qualified for state this season and a couple of other swimmers are close to qualifying,” he says.
Mell’s coaching philosophy is the same no matter which sport he happens to be coaching at the time. He wants to them to give their best and enjoy the sport in which they participate. “I want a good, honest effort so they can develop and do things they’ve never done before. I want them to run faster than they’ve ever run or swim faster than they’ve ever swam before. And I want them to have fun doing it,” he says.
Patti, a former Valdosta State University cheerleader, coaches cheerleading and gymnastics. She has a background in both sports though she has more experience cheering. Patti is the head eighth and ninth grade cheerleading coach for football and basketball, an assistant with varsity football cheerleading, and the head gymnastics coach. In addition, she helps Mell with cross country from time to time.
Growing up, Patti cheered and took gymnastics. Cheering was her first love; she took gymnastics to supplement her cheerleading skills. “When I was in the ninth grade, I decided to focus on cheerleading. I was in gymnastics because I knew I wanted to cheer in college and I needed the tumbling background. Leaving gymnastics to focus on cheering was an easy decision to make,” she says.
Coming from a very athletic family, coaching was something very natural to her. When Patti was a student at VSU, she was coaching gymnastics at the Valdosta YMCA. At the same time, she was cheering for the Blazers. Coaching was always on her mind, and she knew that, one way or the other, she would likely end up coaching as an adult.
And now it’s something she spends most of her non-teaching time doing.
With young cheerleaders, it’s about teaching them the technique they’ll need as high school cheerleaders. It’s also about teaching them to accept the role they play during a football or basketball game. “I want them to realize that they play a role during the game. It has to be a positive role as well. I want them to feel like they’re important,” she says. That’s particularly difficult during basketball season. Football gets all the attention at Colquitt County; basketball doesn’t grab the headlines and most girls would rather cheer for football anyway. But while football may be what people tend to focus on, cheering for basketball is a much more challenging sport. The game is faster, the fans are closer, and everything changes in an instant. “You have to switch your offense and defense cheers in a matter of seconds. It takes time to teach the girls how to switch cheers so fast. I can call a cheer but often the game changes before they can even get the new cheer started. It takes time to teach them how to switch,” says Patti.
While gymnastics, Patti’s other sport, shares some common skills with cheerleading, the two sports are very different and require different approaches to coaching. The problem Colquitt faces with gymnastics is the same problem many small communities face – numbers. “When your top gymnasts are club gymnasts and you’re a one-county school, gymnastics can be difficult. You can’t pull from 100 top gymnasts like you can with cheerleading. It’s a tougher sport, and it requires at least 20 hours per week in the gym every week of the year,” she says. Patti’s team may have just 10 girls, and out of those 10, maybe half are serious gymnasts. She rounds out her team with cheerleaders who have skills that translate well into certain routines.
Injuries also wreak havoc on gymnasts. It’s one of the sports with the highest rate of injury per number of participants. While the injuries aren’t typically head injuries (though they can be), the injuries are often very debilitating. For example this year, Patti’s top gymnast, Timia Fowler, a Level 9 gymnast, is coming off two knee surgeries. Several years ago, Patti’s daughter, Megan Crosby, a Level 10, battled injuries to both ankles. To this day, Megan still has trouble with her ankles and can barely run on them. “Injuries are always a problem for us. But for the challenges we have, we typically do pretty well. Last year, we were fifth in the state. That was a major accomplishment. We had a whole team at the state meet and that helped tremendously,” she says.
Overall, the entire athletic program at Colquitt County has improved as the football team has ascended to the top of the gridiron heap in Georgia. The same expectations that drive the football team also fuel the other sports. “Our administration expects us to win just like they expect the football team to win,” says Mell. “We have access to the same resources the football team has. We have a full-time athletic trainer and a great therapy program. We have all the resources we need to be successful and we’ve raised our expectations. That’s a big difference over the last few years,” says Mell.
But having resources and high expectations doesn’t lessen the strain of coaching 10 different sports from August to May. How do the Weirs do it? “This is what we do. We have also have five kids so this can be very difficult. It can also be hard to find time to spend with Patti. But I’ll follow the basketball team and she helps me with my sports if need her to. So we find the time,” says Mell.
“We love what we do or we wouldn’t do it. We’re able to work together and help each other out. We’re fortunate to be able to do that. If we couldn’t help each other, we wouldn’t be able to coach all these sports,” says Patti.
Coach’s Corner/South Georgia/February 2016
Mell and Patti Weir
Colquitt County School System
Moultrie, Georgia
Robert Preston Jr.
Coaching is indeed a family affair for the Weirs
