Building A Strong Athletics Program Jk-12

By Abe Wehmiller, director of Athletics

A DEFINING FEATURE of our athletics program is the ability to develop a good number of our student-athletes from the time they are in junior kindergarten through their Middle and Upper School years.

To fully leverage that opportunity, it is important for us to make sure all the individual sports that make up that program are vertically integrated. By that, I mean we are teaching physical fitness, general athletic ability, sport-specific techniques and tactics, and the various “soft skills” in an intentional sequence. Our belief is that students learn best in sports the same way they learn best in, say, reading: They need the alphabet to build words, words to build sentences, sentences to build paragraphs, and paragraphs to build essays, papers, and books.

This past fall, in part because of feedback from the athletics program survey and evaluation we conducted last spring, we redoubled our efforts to introduce or strengthen connections between the activities that take place at multiple levels of our program. Nearly every one of our fall sports had some sort of “integrated” venture during the course of the season, whether that was a joint practice between Middle School, junior varsity, and varsity teams; a Lower School student joining a varsity team as a “Player for a Day,” or an After School Enrichment class conducted by a varsity coach.

Impactful Programs

Two initiatives had a particularly significant impact. In September, our Volleyball program held its “Program Night” for the second straight year. A big crowd of students and parents from all grades showed up to first watch the 7th grade, 8th grade, and junior varsity teams play simultaneous matches against Providence Day in Bruton Smith Athletic Center. After a quick reconfiguring of the gym, the varsity players took over on the main court with an impressive win over PD. This structure allows for interaction between players and coaches at all levels that is difficult during a busy season and across two campuses. Our promotional slogan, “One program, one night, all Bucs,” captures the motivation behind the planning.

In August, with the help of an energetic group of parents, we launched our Country Day Flag Football program for students in grades two to six. We expected to attract 35–40 students and field three to four teams in the Harris YMCA’s fall league. We ended up with 100 students on 11 teams! Under the guidance of parent volunteer coaches, the teams practiced on Wednesday evenings on Cannon Campus, immediately following varsity practices.

This setup allowed our coaches to provide additional guidance and oversight, and for current varsity players to assist with drills and mentor the younger flag players. Flag players received a Country Day jersey to proudly wear on their Saturday games and around town. The season culminated with a program-wide practice in Belk Stadium, connecting all players at all grade levels.

You’ll continue to see us expand these sorts of efforts going forward, as we believe it as an essential part of the work we do to provide our student-athletes with a meaningful and memorable experience in our program and achieve excellence in athletics at Country Day.