The Saying: Rusty Taylor ready to lead Callaway Cross Country back to the playoffs – LaGrange Daily News

Callaway Cross Country has a new head coach. Rusty Taylor will take over as head coach and lead the cross country team into the future.

The Troup High graduate and former cross country coach at his alma mater is in his second year as a teacher at Callaway High and was an assistant coach for the team his first year.

“Cross country is a tough sport,” Taylor said. “It’s not one of those sports where you just have a lot of people. You have to recruit and train people, and I was able to recruit a lot of wrestlers and a lot of people that my son knew, so I was able to get a good core of people together at Troup. I had a pretty big team there, and that’s what we want here.”

It was hard to say goodbye to their beloved Tigers, but the Taylor family felt at home as Cavaliers.

Taylor’s youngest son, Luke, has been a member of the Callaway cross country team for the past two seasons. Unfortunately, Taylor suffered a serious leg injury during the spring baseball season and will miss the cross country season in the fall.

The two will not enter the season as an athlete-coach duo, but as a true coaching duo, with Luke using his experience from the last two seasons to help his father in the coaching department.

“He said he’s going to stay on the team and be by my side and support me in any way he can,” Taylor said. “Obviously I’m sad he can’t run, but it’s going to be great to have him out there by my side.”

Before joining Callaway, Taylor coached cross country and tennis at Troup. Before that, he spent 14 years coaching recreational sports, primarily baseball, basketball and football.

Coaching has been a part of his life for years and stems in large part from wanting to spend time with his two sons. The reason he became a Troup tennis coach was to be with and coach his oldest son, Zach.

“When I first started coaching, I did every sport with him (Zach), baseball, basketball and football, and then I just stuck with it and then took over Luke’s sport and started doing all of his sports with him. Then I was very fortunate to go to high school and be able to coach Zach in tennis and cross country,” Taylor said. “Now, at Callaway, I get to coach Luke in cross country, so it’s all worked out really, really well.”

Although practice doesn’t begin until later in the month, Taylor’s role as cross country head coach has already begun. He is in the process of putting together the schedule, which includes six races and potentially a few more to come.

Taylor is also looking for new players. He wants to have enough girls to field a competitive team (5) and also around 10-12 boys. The team is expected to have a lot of juniors, with a mix of experienced and new players.

The goal for the 2024 season is simple and clear: to qualify for the state championship. The boys and girls narrowly missed out on the state championship at the regional meet last season. Taylor has made no secret of the fact that the teams can achieve these goals if they put in the effort.

“We always run Monday through Thursday. On Friday and the weekend, I try to give them the rest of their bodies off and tell them to run on their own at least once in those three days,” Taylor said. “We train hard those four days, we give it our all and run new and different courses, different types of runs. Whether it’s running on concrete, running in the woods or something else. We just do all kinds of things to get them ready for the real race because every course we go to is different.”