Staff writer
As it got later into the summer, players of the Centre High School football team were getting nervous. They didn’t have a coach.
That was until Tye Remy, a paraeducator for Centre High’s special education program and a CHS alum, decided to tell the school he was interested in the position.
Remy, who graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in geography, wasn’t planning on being available to coach high school football. He was mapping pipelines at an engineering firm in Kansas City for a year and a half before realizing the field wasn’t for him. He moved home when Yvonne Burhoop of Herington called and asked him whether he wanted a job working at the high school.
Remy has spent the past school year as a paraeducator and is pursuing a teaching degree at Emporia State University.
When Remy, whose football experience consisted of playing at Centre and a lifetime of being a fan, started coming to weight-lifting sessions, players got excited to have him on as coach, he said. With the position came added responsibility, which made him anxious and a little nervous.
“I wasn’t sleeping a lot, thinking about what I was gonna do,” he said. “But when camp started up I got really excited about what we were doing.”
Centre’s football camp went from July 14 through 20. Centre has been a running team in the past, Remy said, so his early work has gone into preparing his players to establish the run.
“Be smart, be tough, that’s pretty much it,” Remy said of his coaching philosophy. “And make good decisions.”
Centre will be looking to its three seniors to fill the captaincy of this year’s team. Dakota Stimpson, Conner Montgomery and Justin Bina will step into leadership positions. Stimpson will play quarterback, Remy said, but the positions of the other two players are undecided. Montgomery is may be slated as the running back, while Bina is even more up in the air.
“We’ve been moving him all over the place,” Remy said.
Remy, who is taking over for Stan Wiles, acknowledged that the team lost a lot of players to graduation, but nonetheless has set higher goals.
“I’ve told the guys our No. 1 goal is to make the playoffs,” he said. “We had a disappointing loss to Lebo-Waverly last season but we think the district is set up pretty favorably this year.”
Remy said he’s received a lot of texts and Facebook messages from the kids conveying their excitement for the upcoming season.
“We all have to get a little better every day,” he said. “I have to get better because I’m new at this, and I ask the kids to get better every day as well.”