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by Carson Hadley
Managing Editor
It was a Friday night in August 2018, and the NS football team was facing off against Union high school in their home opener. After two intense quarters under the lights, the score was 6-3 for NS. It was a close game. But for newly hired drill team coaches Kiersten Wheeler and Brittany Dyches, football was the last thing on their minds.
“That very first football game was one that really stands out to me,” Wheeler said. “We came into this position with a team that was really struggling, a program that was kind of ashes. It was nerve-racking, and I remember feeling so much pressure. I didn’t want to disappoint the community and the parents, and [the girls] did so good. I just remember the whole crowd being like ‘Wow.’”
Now, after leading the NS drill team to four consecutive state 2nd place finishes, Wheeler and Dyches are stepping down from coaching. Following the state competition this year, the coaches made the announcement first to the school administration, then to their team.
“It has been so hard,” Wheeler said. “It’s so much time, and it’s not just time physically here at the school in the gym. It’s time at home. I lay down and my head is just going through every scenario…It’s just non-stop, all the time.”
Both Wheeler and Dyches have young families, and while they have loved their experience working with the girls on the team and being a part of the program, they feel it’s time for them to take a break.
“We are not going out of here being like, ‘Yes, hands in the air, hallelujah, we’re done!’ It has been heart-wrenching, and I have really shed tears every day,” Wheeler said. “You just pour your whole heart into something, and to see the end of it, it hurts.”
In their years of coaching, Wheeler and Dyches have built a program together that has been one of the most successful in recent school history.
“They took a team that was not even placing at state, wouldn’t even make it past the first round of state,” said junior drill team member Lakely Brotherson. “And we made it past and all of the teams that have taken state, we’ve beat them. Not at state but at different invitationals and competitions.”
Wheeler and Dyches have been friends for a long time, and have been coaching dance together for years.
“We just knew each other our whole lives,” Dyches said. “I coached her in dance, and as soon as she graduated high school she came and worked for me at my studio and we’ve just been together ever since.”
When the head drill team coach job opened up at NS, both of them decided to apply with the understanding that whoever got the head coach position would bring on the other as an assistant coach. After Wheeler was hired as the head coach and Dyches as the assistant, they immediately started making changes.
“From practice, to expectations, to attendance, to contract, to practice time and what we did in practice was probably the biggest change,” Dyches said. “We utilized every second for practice. There is no downtime.”
Those changes had an immediate effect on the team, something that the community noticed at that first performance during the football game. From there they went on to place at several competitions, eventually leading up to placing second at the state competition their first year. That success has continued through their coaching careers.
Both coaches are grateful for the support that they received from the school and from the girls who had been on the team prior to them being hired.
“I really appreciate the girls that came and trusted us,” Dyches said. “Because I know that they were pulled strongly by other friends choosing to do other sports or other teams, and the girls that trusted us and put in the work and the time, I really really appreciate them.”
While it hasn’t been easy for both the girls and the coaches, to Wheeler, it was all worth the cost.
“It has been stressful obviously, physically, mentally, but it has been the best thing too,” Wheeler said. “It has been an experience that I would not trade for anything. To see the improvement that’s come about. Things that are worth having, you have to put in the hard work for.”
Part of what has made Wheeler and Dyches’ coaching experience so enjoyable has been working together.
“It’s been a lot of fun coaching with my best friend every day,” Dyches said. “To find a good coach plus an assistant and having them work well together is very rare, and we’ve been so fortunate to be able to do that together.”
They are going to miss working with the team and seeing the impact that drill can have on their lives.
“It’s exciting to make a change in these girls’ lives and show them that they are good and that they can accomplish great things,” Dyches said, “and that the things that they’ve learned, hopefully from us, they can carry that on to their adult lives.”
And while the team will miss their coaches, they understand why they made the decision to step down.
“As of right now,” Brotherson said, “we understand that this is what’s best for their lives because they have younger kids and they do miss out on a lot of time with their families. We do too. So we do understand what their doing is best for them and it’s not because they don’t love us or they don’t want us to be successful.”
