Monday evening on The Hill !

Mrs. Dalton and three of her fellow teachers/coaches on the Academics side of competition.

 When you are meeting people that Coach the Sports teams you don’t always know which ones teach or work at the school and which ones are just connected to CCHS only through Athletics. There was no doubt about that for me when I first met Shannon Dalton. Shannon wears a multitude of hats 👒, sometimes she has to wear two or three of them at the same time. Teacher of students, Coach of 2 different Academic teams and our provider of everything that happens within the Swimming program. I’m sure that I am only scratching the surface with Mrs. Dalton because we have only been working on things for a brief period of time. One of the first things you will notice about Mrs. Dalton is just how much she CARES about everything that she is involved in. Care is the most important word in all of our efforts so its the first thing we try to gage when we meet someone.

 The two of us recently combined to create one post together that took just over four hours to create. It was a Saturday afternoon with the Swim 🏊‍♂️ team competing down in Abingdon at the same time one of the Academic teams was competing over at Bassett High School.

Shannon had pretty strong 💪 ties to both locations as did many of the Student Athletes and instructors. The Academics side of things is made up of Athletes from a number of different sports mixed in with very intelligent Students. The texting back and forth started early and went on throughout the day. An update from Bassett followed by one from Bristol, back and forth she went.

 Fast Forward to the end of the night 🌙 when my Wife called from out in Missouri and asked me about my day. I told her that I had spent just under five hours creating a post 📫 for two of our Cavalier teams. Fortunately Lin and I are closing in on 40 years together now so she wasn’t surprised at all. If someone cares enough about something that they believe in to take the time to share it with me in such detail, I am all in on doing my part to get the message out.

 To try and create an analogy that would match my appreciation for Mrs. Dalton I will reach deep into my thought process.

 We spent a great deal of our time fishing for people that Care ❤ about our Youth, and in Shannon Dalton, I feel we hooked The Meg ! Now the challenge for us is to be strong 💪 enough to hang on.

 Table #8 will have a place card that reads Shannon Dalton Cares, sadly it doesn’t have a little meter to show just how much ! There would have to be red shooting out of the top of the Meter !

Darrin Mathews is heading down the home stretch of a lifetime of helping take care of our Youth. The Athletic Director position in High School 🏫 is treated very much like the weather man 👨 or lady 👩.

The weather reporter is right 95% of the time without anyone noticing. But the other 5%, when they don’t hit the mark, people tend to pounce on them.

Let’s switch back to the Athletic Director. The AD has to be so many things for so many people and when Mother Nature rears her head the job becomes borderline impossible.

Nobody wants to show Love 💘 to their AD. But let there be an issue with a Bus 🚌 or the rescheduling of a game that doesn’t line up perfectly to fit everyone’s needs people are ready to throw stones at the AD’s door.

I have spent four full decades in the offices 🏢 and on the fields with AD’s and the story remains the same across the board.

Darrin Mathews has been nothing but kind to me for three years now and for that I’m grateful 🙏. To show our appreciation to this fine man 👨 we have set aside a Table for him and the first piece of business after Glenn Burnett speaks will be to present Darrin with a Gold Watch ⌚.

Why would I take a part of our Big Day to show appreciation for our AD ? That’s an easy one, because I can and he deserves it.