Fort Defiance fires Waters
TNV File Photo
Terry Waters hugs Jeff Weeks after the Fort wrestler won the state championship in 2004 at the Salem Civic Center.
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By Jim Sacco
Published: June 10, 2008
Long-time Fort Defiance wrestling coach Terry Waters has been fired, ending a career that produced two state champions and two undefeated seasons, Augusta County’s top school official said Tuesday.
Fort Defiance High School officials decided to go in a different direction, Augusta County Schools Superintendent Gary McQuain said. Because Waters was not a tenured teacher, his coaching contract could be renewed or terminated at the end of the year by Fort Defiance Principal Larry Landes, McQuain said.
Waters said Landes cited his lack of a relationship with the other coaches.
“I told him, ‘How can I have a relationship with people who never gave me a chance when I first got to Fort?’ ” Waters said in a text message.
Neither Landes nor school Athletic Director Jack Tucker could be
reached for comment.
Waters ends his 14-year career at Fort Defiance with a 231-65 record.
Waters informed his team and wrestlers’ parents of the move Monday night in a meeting at the New Hope Community Center, where the Battlefield Wrestling Club is based, said Stacy Sutherland, mother of junior wrestler Justin Sutherland.
“It was an emotional meeting,” she said. “Especially for some of the guys — they’ve only wrestled for Waters.”
Team scorekeeper Jennifer Strother wondered which direction school officials had in mind for the program.
“Down?” she said.
Strother has been involved in the school’s wrestling program since her son, Daniel, began competing for Waters in the sixth grade. Officials could have handled Waters’ firing differently, she said.
“I thought they were kind of giving him the bum’s rush,” she said. “In all fairness, they could have let him know in March or April when there were other offers on the table.”
Waters posted winning seasons in 13 of his 14 years as coach. In addition to two state champions, Waters coached 14 state runners-up.
Strother said Waters maintained contact with wrestlers even after they left his tutelage.
“He still keeps in touch with
my son,” she said. “This is not the kind of coach who just graduates kids and moves on to the next bunch.”
Strother is a member of the Battlefield Wrestling Club board. Waters is the executive officer of Augusta County’s amateur wrestling club.
Waters, who is legally deaf, was one of three black head varsity coaches in Augusta County, Waynesboro and Staunton. The others are Riverheads cross country coach Doris Scott and Waynesboro girls basketball coach Secrett Stubblefield.
News Virginian staff writer Bob Stuart contributed to this story.
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Reader Reactions
Posted by ( fuzz ) on June 18, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Many stories yet to come, some positive, many negative and from many people I am sure. Wow, it is about time people speak up about true feelings they have about Ft. Defiance HS. I do believe many actions at the school are coming from the top down. What is really needed is to elect a new school board who will not renew the school supertindents contract. When that happens you may be able rest!!
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Posted by ( TIRED ) on June 16, 2008 at 3:09 pm
THE FDHS ADMINISTRATION HAS INSINUATED THAT THEY HAVE SOME INFORMATION ABOUT COACH WATERS AND IF THE PARENTS WERE AWARE OF THIS THEY WOULD NOT BE AS FAST TO SUPPORT HIM. THEY FIRED HIM FROM BEING HEAD COACH OF TEENAGE YOUNG MEN,BECAUSE HE IS NOT FIT TO BE THEIR LEADER AND ROLE MODLE,BUT HE IS ALLOWED TO HOLD HIS WRESTLING CAMP AT FDHS, AND WAS TOLD HE COULD STILL WORK WITH THE ELEMENTRY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL PROGRAMS. IF HE HAS DONE THINGS SO DISHONEST OR IMMORAL TO WARRENT BEING FIRED AS HEAD VARSITY COACH WHY IS HE ALLOWED TO WORK WITH THE YOUNGER CHILDREN. IF HE’S NOT WORTHY TO WORK WITH VARSITY BOYS WOULDN’T YOU THINK THE REASONS SHOULD BE KNOWN SO THE PARENTS CAN DECIDE IF HE IS SOMEONE THEY TRUST WITH THEIR YOUNGER CHILDREN. COME ON JACK YOU LIKE USING THREATS AND YOUR “KNOWLEDGE” OF THE LAW AS SCARE TACTICS. IT SEEMS LIKE YOUR YEARS AS A PROBATION OFFICER HAVE LED YOU TO BELIEVE YOU HAVE MORE POWER THAN YOU REALLY DO. IF YOU USED THESE SAME TACTICS WITH EVERYONE YOU’VE DELT WITH I’M SURE VERY FEW RESPECT YOU. HOW MANY DID YOU REALLY HELP TO GET THEIR LIFE BACK ON TRACK? THE STUDENTS AT FDHS HAVE A LOT OF RESPECT FOR LARRY LANDES BUT YOU HAVE NOT EARNED THE RESPECT OF THE STUDENTS OR PARENTS.I DON’T KNOW ANY STUDENT WHO WANTS TO USE YOU AT THEIR ROLE MODLE THROUGH OUT THEIR LIFE. I’M SURE YOUR MINDS ARE MADE UP AND WE HAVE LOST COACH WATERS BUT I HOPE SOME GOOD WILL COME OUT OF THIS MESS AND JACK TUCKER WILL BE HELD MORE ACCOUNTABLE FOR HIS WORDS AND ACTIONS.
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Posted by ( NoNonSense ) on June 16, 2008 at 7:58 am
Its official, Fort Defiance secet is out in the open everyone now knows where the three stooges has been hiding out.
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Posted by ( augcoparent ) on June 15, 2008 at 9:36 pm
What ever happened to “If it isn’t broke you don’t fix it?“ Fort when are you going to wake up and realize you have or I mean HAD what is the envy of all the other surrounding schools. As a matter of fact something many of them have tried to copy. You have a man that has built a program from the ground up working with the wrestlers that aren’t old enough to even enter your fine school system yet to the alumni!
LEt’s stop to look at what you have to get a new coach to come to Fort:
1. Fear of your contract not being renewed because you had a winning season
2. Fear of a contract that may not be renewed because of your relationship or lack of realtionships with other coaches (but it doesn’t matter that one of those coaches sent an email trashing you to the sports editor of the local paper for giving some positive coverage
3. Fear of a contract that may not be renewed because you are producing true athletics and developing young men by the time they graduate.
4.Fear of a contract that may not be renewed because of the GREAT relationships you have with your wrestlers and their families
5. You are the only school in Augusta County not to have a wrestling room (but you have the best record) DON"T YOU THINK THAT SEEMS ODD????????
MAybe Augusta County should of stopped and looked around at the other schools and weigh the damage that has been done due to coaching changes and how much it has damaged the program and how long it taken to try to recover and must I say you NEVER recover and they haven’t lost near what Fort has lost.
Has anyone stop to think even more upsetting is the fact that the same people are in charge of your children’s education and WE are paying THEIR salary to make these kind of decisions. SCAREY THOUGHT ISN’T IT????
All I got to say is Fort you have some mighty BIG shoes to be filling.
Speaking of relationships - now we stop to ask the question to Mr. Landes and Mr. Tucker what kinda of relationship you going to have with the students at Fort Defiance High School? We keep hearing “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” Yeah right how many did you leave behind this time???
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Posted by ( Student ) on June 15, 2008 at 10:06 am
What kind of message is this sending to the students of fort defiance? I’m unaware of any facilty or staff at Fort Defiance ever lending a helping hand to the student body the way coach waters has. nobody else called the night of prom to make sure they had a safe ride home.
They want the wresteling program to “go in a new direction”, wouldn’t it be better to have the sports programs that aren’t doing well to GO IN A NEW DIRECTION?
This is a man to be looked up to and honored for being such a great roll model, not fire him and take him away from student body who felt he was often the only one they could turn to in a time of need.
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Posted by ( JGWJ ) on June 14, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I’m Coach Mokey Wilson and I just heard a few days ago from my son, Grant what was going on with Coach Waters at Fort. Most people in the Valley know that Coach Waters and I go a long way back as he used to coach me as a teenager. I’ve coached at Lee, and was the Head Coach for a very successful Stuarts Draft team before I left to be Coach Waters assistant at Fort. Terry is my son Grant’s God Father and it wasn’t long before he was wrestling at Fort and is an All American wrestler in no small part because of Terry Waters. Terry has been like family to me and my kids, being there for me when I needed him as I was a single parent…he even helped buy my daughter’s prom dress. All that being said…I am extremely concerned that Terry is being treated this way. I’ve been on the phone trying to find out what is going on and have not been able to talk to Terry yet as everyone is being very discrete about the details. So…I’ll have to speculate. When I coached with Terry at Fort…none of the other Coaches were very friendly to us and I assumed that it was because we had an extremely successful program and they did not. But Terry and I were there for the kids and I did not care how they treated me because I stand taller than that. Coach Converse was the worse. He knew better than to mess with me but he would always do things to agitate Terry and to undermine our program like steering kids away from wrestling for idiotic reasons. Coach Con, as they call him, is a sub-standard coach with issues of his own that the administration really needs to address. And speaking of the administration, Jack Tucker is the same guy who tried to take my kids from me when they were toddlers because he thought, “ that I was too lucky in life that I got to go to the Naval Academy.“ As if taking my kids from me would even the score for him. Newsflash Jack…I’ve raised my kids and they’ve turned out wonderful. This man should not be invloved in any way with decisions to do with children. At the end of the day…Fort and the community has lost a great coach and the kids will miss out on all Coach Waters has to offer. There is not enough time or space here for me to write about what a great guy Terry is, so I’ll just say that Terry, it’s my turn to be here for you, and as I’ve been telling you to take a break from wrestling, this is the time…you owe the world of wrestling nothing, and Fort even less. You stand taller than them.
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Posted by ( fortwrestler08 ) on June 12, 2008 at 6:25 pm
First off.. I agree with rls65 on the grounds of his job isn’t to be friends with the other coaches. He’s a great man. I’ve wrestled under coach waters ever since i started in middle school. Maybe he doesn’t have time to socialize with the other coaches(that is if they would give him the chance to). I don’t know anyother coach that spends more time with the team than coach. Even in middle school when I first started, he would take me across the state, just so i could wrestle and get better. I remember one time at a national tournament, i lost in the consolations, and i remember telling coach the reason i lost the match was because he wasn’t in my corner coaching me, he had got caught up on another mat for one reason or another. Personally, I think coach waters is the quintessence of a true coach. He loves his atheletes and will drop anything he is doing to help his kids. The other wrestlers, past, present, and even the upcoming kids love coach to death and think the world of him.
I also remember a time that Coach took me to salisbury MD to wrestle in the middle alantic tournment. It was just him and me. Even after the tournment, we stopped at his brothers on the way home, and introduced me to his family.
I don’t know what kind of direction you want to go if you plan on getting rid of coach waters. I recently graduated from fort defiance and finished my career under coach waters. I can honestly say, if there was any other coach in that wrestling room besides coach and his assistants, i could not have kept on wrestling. I’ll be the first to say that at times i hated wrestling because of one or another, even disagreements with coach…but my anger arose when coach would say something to help me and i just didn’t want to hear it. Coach waters seems like he is a part of my family and I am sure all other wrestlers would say the same.
We know he loves us, because at school events like prom he texts us and asks us to notify him when we get home so he knows we are safe. If you can find another coach that loves his atheletes as much as coach waters i would be greatly amazed.
I don’t think tucker has ever been fond of wrestling, and it easily noticed.
If you want to be concerned about the students best interests, how about you keep a coach that loves the kids like his own, who, without doubt would take a bullet for any of us.
Is this really the one whos job should be in the air, or should it be someone else in the administration?
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Posted by ( napa457 ) on June 12, 2008 at 5:49 pm
If you haven’t read Jim Sacco’s blog on this subject, do it now. Thanks, Jim, for asking the questions that not just wrestling parents have been asking for years. I suspect from what I have heard from others parents at other schools, the “politics of HS sports” is not confined to FDHS. In addition, it appears that public schools are trying to “lower the bar” so that no one has to feel bad about their performance. As a parent of a former HS wrestler, I have seen the move in this direction first hand for several years. Even more disturbing is that they are lowering the bar in the classroom as well. Why do approximately 40% of incoming college freshmen require remedial courses in either math or english. Your kids deserve better than this and so did Terry Waters. I won’t be attending any more sporting events at Fort. Sell your popcorn and hot dogs to someone willing to settle for mediocrity.
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Posted by ( 5pointer ) on June 12, 2008 at 3:08 pm
For the kids’ sake, I hope a replacement was secured before Terry was released. Given the time, love and dedication Terry brought to the wrestling program year around, it would be a real shame if the administration did not replace him with an outstanding individual with the same dedication to the wrestling family.
If this was a passing of the torch to improve the program, you would think it could have occured ceremoniously. This seems to have transpired without any sensitivity towards the parents and athletes. (Gary McQuain, perhaps you have a good opportunity to “coach” local administration on how to better handle similar situations in the future.)
If the direction for the program is south, you don’t need to go far down route 11. Staunton has done a number of things to improve their wrestling program in both high school and middle school. The addition of Terry and any of his staff would accelerate development of wrestling in Staunton and be more than welcome.
Working together Joe Boone and Terry’s staff could put together a wrestling program and club to rival those in the Tidewater area. Any kid with dedication and physical talent necessary to be a state champion could be match with the high caliber coaching necessary to realize the dream.
But right now, Jack and Gary you need to realize some kids at Fort are wondering about their dreams. Don’t let them down.
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Posted by ( Willis ) on June 12, 2008 at 11:22 am
It was interesting to see that FDHS is also getting a new girls basketball coach. I hope Mr. Hartley does a better job for Commando Lando than he did while they were at WMHS when Mr Hartley was the JV boys basketball coach. Welcome to the club, Patrick and good luck to Coach Waters.
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