Coaching in high school is not easy, especially since most coaches also have to teach in the classroom. But JV baseball and varsity volleyball coach Walt Ellison can handle it all. He has been coaching for 22 years and he understands the ups and downs of the job. “We are all called to do certain things, and I’ve been called to coach,”  Ellison said.

Before coming to The Mill, Ellison coached baseball at Fayette County High School for five years. Two years ago, he also took on the head volleyball coaching duties after former coach Michael Melvin married and moved to South Carolina. “I [did it] because I liked the challenge of learning a new sport,” Ellison said.

He said volleyball was an eye-opening experience because until then he had never coached both a girls and a boys sport. “Coaching girls and boys is completely different,” Ellison said. “Guys have to bond by competing together, and girls have to bond before they compete.”

Ellison used the JV baseball team as an example. He said that the players “improve every game in the season because the guys build better chemistry as they compete.” As for the volleyball team,  “We went to a Braves game together before our season started,” he said.

One of his players, sophomore defensive specialist Alexis Berrios,  agreed. “We went through a lot of stuff in the preseason to help with forming a tighter bond, which helped us win games,” Berrios said.

These are the types of experiences that allow Ellison to build better relationships with his players. “Success isn’t measured in wins and losses but in the relationships you build with the kids,” he said.

And that carries over into the classroom too.

“Teaching comes first because it’s my job,” said JV softball coach and Health teacher Rhonda Manley, “but it can be hard at times to juggle everything and make sure you don’t have a meltdown in class.”

Manley, who played college softball at the University of Tennessee, has coached JV softball for 17 years. Before coming to SMHS, she coached at Westover High in Albany for four years. “It was a natural thing to become a coach when I became a teacher,” Manley said. Her love of coaching is what keeps her coming back. “I love working with kids, which is why I have done it for so long,” Manley said. It can also be hard for her because she has a young child at home, but time management is the key, she said. 

For Manley, the clock starts running in the summer well before school starts. The JV softball team practices two to three times a week for a summer league it plays in. That’s in addition to its off-season workouts. When the season starts, they practice every weekday after school, including Fridays, for two hours, and that doesn’t include the time she spends after practice helping players with fundamentals and cleaning up. They usually play two to three games a week. On game days, they normally get home by 9 p.m. at the earliest and 11 p.m. at the latest, she said. “You do it because you love to do it,” Manley said.

Coaches’ lives are full of a lot of little “extras” too, like mandatory CPR training and annual coaching clinics, that claim more of their time. Head swim coach Robin Huggins had to take a Georgia High School Association online course to get certified.

Huggins, whose season recently ended, said she easily put in eight hours a week attending practices at 6:30 a.m. and again at 7:30 p.m. This wasn’t counting the all-day swim meets that occurred every weekend, she said.

Huggins said this commitment to coaching didn’t affect her in the classroom too much, but “I can get grumpy if I don’t get enough sleep.”

On days when the team had morning practices, she said she got up at 4:30 a.m. That didn’t surprise her because she swam at Hendrix College in Arkansas and knew all too well about those early morning practice times.

On days when the team had a meet, they gathered at the school around 7-8  a.m. If they had a meet at the Kedron Fieldhouse, they  met around 10:30 a.m. at the school to travel to the meet, which usually started around noon. “I think I spent my coaching supplement on gas,” Huggins said.

Huggins said she started coaching swimming because she loves the sport and wanted to reconnect with students outside of class because her two children graduated in 2012. When her children were here, she had strong bonds with them and their friends, but now that they’ve graduated, she misses having connections with teenagers. 

Varsity girls basketball and freshman football coach Shane Ratliff said he has a set philosophy for coaching his teams.

“It is to work hard and to have fun to get as much out of them as possible,” Ratliff said. His outlook has proven to work well.

Two years ago the girls’ basketball team went 20-6 with a trip to the state playoffs, and the boys’ freshman football team won three games this year, a school record.

Having players who are unmotivated can pose a problem for some coaches, but Ratliff has his own ideas for motivating them. “I use incentives like limiting playing time, and a ‘you do this, I give you this’ idea,” Ratliff said.

Ellison said he doesn’t change his approach to coaching no matter what the sport is. “My philosophy is about having my players wanting to be involved in the team tasks as well as their individual tasks.”

Huggins said she doesn’t have a philosophy but instead focuses on goals for the next year. In fact, she is already thinking about next year.  “I want us to be more connected and to have a tighter bond,” Huggins said. Sophomore Nick Palmer agreed. “With her coaching next year, we will do very good.”

Working with seniors is always a happy part of coaching because coaches get to see their players graduate and go off to be young men and women. 

“They’re leaving as better people, which makes it OK,” Ratliff said. The basketball team has three seniors, and two of them have scholarships to play college sports. Natalie Orcutt will play softball at Appalachian State University, and Carly Pressgrove will play soccer at Kennesaw State University.

Volleyball has one senior with a scholarship, Danielle Ajayi, who is preparing to play at Southern Mississippi University. “The seniors need to live their lives,” Ellison said. 

Athletic Director and Assistant Principal Allen Leonard said he is impressed with the coaches at the school. “We are lucky to have coaches with so much experience. Our coaches work hard all the time and are underpaid for what they do,” Leonard said.