The Garden City Telegram

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Weatherly retiring as athletics director at GCHS

Published 1/12/2010 in Prep-Garden City

By JASON ELMQUIST

jelmquist@gctelegram.com

After 22 years of service in the Garden City School District, the school board on Monday accepted the letter of intent to retire for Bill Weatherly as associate principal and athletics and activities director at Garden City High School — effective the end of the current contract year, June 30.

"It's just one of those things that I've been considering for the last couple of years," Weatherly said on Monday afternoon. "I've been going to a lot of retirement meetings and you come to a point in your life when you just think it's time to do something different. And I have reached that point."

Weatherly first came to Garden City in 1988 to coach as defensive coordinator at the high school under then head football coach Dave Meadows and took over the athletics director position when Meadows resigned the position in 2000.

"I came here with coach Meadows and had you told me I would have stayed here past five years, I would have laughed at you," Weatherly said. "But Garden City has been great for me or we wouldn't have stayed for 22 years. It's just time."

Weatherly has no immediate plans for the future, saying that he's leaving all options open and that he may stay in education and administration or return to coaching.

"I have no clue," Weatherly said. "I can honestly look you right in the eye and say I have no clue. I've told that to everybody I've talked to. I'm just ready to do something else and I don't know what that new challenge will be, but whatever it is it will be different and I'll go from there. It's actually nerve-wracking because leaving an awfully good job to right now not knowing. I just know that I need to go do something different."

Weatherly was a big reason Mike Smith returned to Garden City in 2002 to take over the head coaching position for the football program. The two were coordinators under Meadows for several years before Smith took the head coaching job at Valley Center.

"I wouldn't have come if he weren't here, probably," Smith said. "We had been pretty successful at Valley Center and it was pretty hard to leave there, but (Garden City) is probably the only place I ever would have gone because it was a great five years those first five years I was here under coach Meadows."

Weatherly was a key component in getting the school bond passed last year and in the design process for the new high school. Under Weatherly's tenure as A.D., GCHS also saw improvements in the sports facilities — including the turf field, the south bleachers and the new jumbo-tron at the football stadium along with improvements to the high school's softball field.

"He had a very big part in the school bond issue and making out the plans for the school," Smith said. "I came back in 2002 and (the football stadium) looks like a completely different place. We've got as good a field as anybody in the state now and you don't get those kinds of things unless you have good leadership in the athletic department. ... I've got a lot of respect for what a tough job he has because when you have that tough job, you're not going to make everybody happy. And he put his heart and soul into it."

A reason for Weatherly's decision was with the hope of moving closer to his parents and children in Oklahoma.

"My mom and dad are having some physical things done in Oklahoma that I probably need to get a little closer to and my kids are all down in Oklahoma," Weathlery said. "Not that I know I'll be going to Oklahoma, but I would like to get a little closer to them."

Though Weatherly said he'll miss the kids, teachers and coaches at Garden City, there is one thing he'll be happy to do without.

"Well, I'd like to say not having to drive three hours to watch ball games," Weatherly said when asked what he wouldn't miss. "But I don't know whatever my next job, I don't know what it will be. But I am just tired of driving three hours here and there to watch our kids compete. That just physically wears you out. If there's one thing I won't miss, it will be that. It wears on you and I've done it not just for the 10 years as A.D. but before that when I was assistant A.D. and then as a coach. I've rode many busses for three or four or five or eight hours and I am not going to miss that at all."

Weatherly is a native of Elk City, Okla. and a graduate of Elk City High School. He attended York (Neb.) Junior College on a baseball scholarship and graduated from there in 1974. He then attended Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford, Okla. where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1976.

His first year of teaching and coaching was at Weatherford, Okla. High School, where he was the assistant football coach and social studies teacher.

He returned to his hometown of Elk City in 1977 and was the head track coach, assistant football coach, athletics director and assistant principal for eight years. During that time, he earned his master's degree in 1983 at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.

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