Rick Baguley is the athletic director at Homewood High School.
Q: What excites you most about 2024-25?
A: I'm excited about getting started. This will be my first year as the athletic director at Homewood High School and I can't wait to see the fruits of all the hard work that so many of our teams have put in this summer. And, we've had a lot of teams in the weight room, a lot of teams out running, practicing, doing everything they possibly can to be as good as they can be. So, it's exciting to get started. It's exciting to meet new people to welcome in an incoming freshman class and then to see what those younger kids who are now upperclassmen to see how successful they can be. Now, it's their turn to take over the reins in each of their sports. So, I'm really excited to see how we can support these kids, support our coaches and just be absolutely as good as we can possibly be.
Q: Tell us about some of your new coaches and what they bring to the table.
A: So, we hired two new head coaches this spring. The first one was Grace Burgess to take over our volleyball program, and she is no stranger to this place as she graduated from Homewood High School in 2004. We are extremely excited to have her back running the volleyball program. She brings a lot of charisma, a lot of excitement. She really loves to coach and you can tell; it's very obvious in how she runs a practice, how she's hired a staff and how they've been working hard all summer. So, we're really excited about Coach Burgess and her team.
And the other coach that we hired was Elijah Garrison who played college basketball at Alabama-Huntsville and he's been on our staff as an assistant coach with Coach Tim Schepler for the last two years. So, he knows what's going on in the over-the-mountain community and the basketball world, and we're really excited to see him put his stamp and put his mark on our program. To see how, what levels he can take it to.
So, we're really excited about both of Coach Burgess and Coach Garrison, as well as the quality of people. A lot of assistant coaches that we've hired, and I really believe if we hire good people, then that'll lead to good things happening.
Q: What makes for a successful year in athletics?
A: I love this question about what makes a high school athletic season successful because I think there are a lot of ways you could debate it and define it. I think the main goal is always to win a state championship. I think most of us that have been around awhile also know that only one team in each classification in each sport is gonna have that ultimate trophy, but that doesn't mean that you can't be successful. So, what does success look like? I think you have to know your people, you have to know your team, and, if they start out young or inexperienced, how much did they grow? How much progress did they make? How much did they learn? How much, how well, did they compete? There's so many different ways you can measure success. I know the— You take those small things and, if you can stack on some small wins, day after day, week after week, usually by the end of the season that win-loss column takes care of itself. And it can be a very successful season even if it's not necessarily the best record on the final scoreboard, but there's a lot of wins you can find along the way. And, if kids are learning, if kids are growing, if kids are being challenged to be as great as they can possibly be, that can really be a successful season regardless of what the final record might tell us.
