Walkertown High School has put the finishing touches on its coaching staff with the hiring of Bobby Smith as the varsity baseball coach.
Smith, 53 and a native of Walnut Cove, has head coaching experience in Little League, with youth travel teams and, last year, with the Carolina Tigers, a home-school team based in Stokes County.
Smith also was an assistant under Gary Nail at South Stokes and part of a staff that led South to consecutive NCHSAA 1-A championships in 2003 and 2004.
Tim Hagmann, the athletics director at Walkertown, said one thing that made Smith attractive is that he is self-employed. The team needed to hire a non-faculty coach because there are no teaching vacancies at the school.
"We had some very, very strong candidates that we spoke with," Hagmann said. "Bobby has the qualifications. His experience is there, and he's very excited to be a part of the program. I think the tough part for some of the other applicants is we didn't have teaching jobs to go along with coaching…."
Smith, who also coached cross country at South Stokes, said he was interviewed last summer for Walkertown's cross-country vacancy and that he learned then that there wasn't a teaching position available for a baseball coach.
"I sent resumes to about every high school anytime I would see a baseball position open," said Smith, who owns an auto-repair business that is less than 10 minutes away from the Walkertown campus. "It always came down to they hired a faculty member.
"When Tim said they didn't have a teaching position for a coach, I wondered if that wouldn't work to my advantage. I can't tell you how excited I am about starting my own program at the high-school level.
"You have Walkertown Little League, which won the district last summer, plus two travel teams that will feed (the high school). We feel like there's a lot of talent coming in, but it will take a while to develop it."
Scheduling has been an issue because Walkertown will not be assigned to a conference until the 2013-14 school year. Smith said that the program has about 18 games on the schedule — 12 against junior-varsity teams and six against varsity teams.
"We will play a varsity schedule against private schools, home schools, whoever we could schedule late notice," Smith said. "Coach Hagmann has done a good job of rounding up games because most schools have their schedules set in the fall.
"It will be an evaluation process for us this year."
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