If ever there is a technical question about proper discus-heaving footwork, a rules interpretation from the always troublesome triple jump pit, or a point of middle-distance running strategy, the Giles High track girls have an extra expert to consult with this season.

Questioning Spartans can turn to the bus driver.

On the highway or at the track, Rusty Kelley has expert advice on the best route.

As a coach, 2008 retiree Kelley has 30 seasons experience to draw on. As a driver, he’s still learning.

But then, even after all those years, the 53-year-old Kelley is still learning about a lot of stuff. Maybe that’s why he knows so much about track.

“Talk about knowledgeable, you aren’t going to find anybody anymore knowledgeable about the sport at the high school level,” said Mark Hubbard, who succeeded Kelley as girls track coach this spring. “You’re probably not going to find many more knowledgeable at the college level. He has incredible knowledge.”

Ten Three Rivers District team championships and three Region C crowns and five regional runners-up in 18 years (not to mention a VHSL Group AA Region IV boys title in 1984) is proof positive that the transplanted Northern Virginian knows his stuff.

Kelley has done a little bit of everything coachingwise at Giles, the school for which he worked his entire career.
He’d been one of Steve Ragsdale’s assistant football coach all those years. Both of them retired from that sport after the 2007 season. Kelley also took a turn at varsity basketball for six seasons spanning the ’80s and ’90s. He’s been athletic director. All that time, he coached track.

Kelley ran track himself at George C. Marshall High in Falls Church, but before coming to Giles after graduating from Virginia Tech in 1978, had never coached it. Mentors at Giles, particularly Ragsdale, taught him about conveying tips to young athletes.

“I learned a lot from Rags,” Kelley said. “The important thing to know is that coaching is teaching. If you can teach, you can coach.”

That’s why Kelley loves coaching track. There’s a lot more one-on-one teaching. It is, after all, an individual sport staged in a team competition.

For a while, he was coaching both boys and girls. That’s when he coached the Spartans to the 1984 Region IV title behind a standout group of sprinters and jumpers led by the out-of-this-world Tyrone Meadows. Being in the same district as perennial heavyweight Blacksburg at the time, it was a monumental achievement for the Spartans.

The girls hits have kept on coming. In 17 of 18 years in Group A, the girls have finished in the state’s top 20. That’s quite a feat considering the center of track and field power in this classification has always been to the east. Giles has been nothing if not consistent.

The standout athletes have kept coming, too. Kelley won’t name a best-of list for fear of leaving somebody off. Here are just some of an independently compiled list of Spartans stars: Susan Lucas (shot put), Tomika Saunders (sprints and jumps), Melanie Taylor (discus), Jamie Johnson (high jump), April Wilson (multiple), Cindy Howell (multiple), Sasha King (sprints and jumps), sisters Wendella and Nicky Wilcoxson (multiple) and on and on.

Kelley thinks Wendella Wilcoxson is the best all-around athlete he’s ever had. “She could do everything,” he said.
Any of the athletes would readily concede it helps to for coach to know some stuff.

“He’s really good with us,” said senior Rachel Lang, a discus and shot put specialist. “He takes the time and explains. He teaches us technique. He makes sure we know our fundamentals before we even get out there with a disc.”

Kelley, who claims to be retired, is still hard at work as a “volunteer” coaching the girls weight-throwers. That job used to belong to longtime (25 years) coaching sidekick Anne Wheeler. She retired from coaching last year.

Soon, Kelley will have more days spent with his wife, Sherry, who teaches at Eastern Elementary School. She’ll retire after this year.
 
They’ll play some golf, play with the dog, live the life. He figures to keep driving the bus for athletic trips, help with the throwers, do some track officiating, watch some football and baseball on the tube.

The  Kelleys will soon have more time to share photo-taking tips. He snaps at track meets; she’s been the longtime football sideline photog for the yearbook.

 Assuming you can stay out of the throwing field for shot and disc, taking pictures at a meet is a relatively safe pursuit. Not so for football. Rusty Kelley worries some about his wife down on the sidelines.

That doesn’t mean he’s not above needling her some. He was doing some spotting up in the press box one game last season when he saw her get tangled up in traffic that spilled off the field on one play.

Alarmed at first, he was relieved to see her pop up and indicate she was all right.

Kelley then got on the headphones and called down to one of the coaches on the sidelines. He got Maurice Milton. He told Milton not to let on.

“Go over there and ask her if the camera’s OK.”