Teacher Feature: Hampton's Got Heart

“Coach Hampton has made football not only one of the sports I love but also something that I can carry memories from for the rest of my life.”

Andy Hampton has taught and coached for years, creating good, solid relationships with his students and athletes. The quote seen above was from Lucas Waterworth, a Senior who is starting Varsity on the WNHS football team. Waterworth and his fellow seniors (Trotter Hughes, Jack Wiggins) are very appreciative of all Hampton does on the field.

“I’ve known Coach Hampton for my whole entire life and the whole time I’ve known him he has always tried to make us feel comfortable,” says Hughes. “He makes practice enjoyable and jokes with us all the time while making it a serious experience. He fits right in with us as a person and pushes us to want to be better.” And Hampton does try to create a positive experience. “We try to set up some fun drills at practice to motivate the kids, and we constantly stress a next-play mentality. We are always talking about "winning your rep" as a player. I am able to get on to our kids, and they respond because they know I have high expectations of them and that I will be the first one there to celebrate with them when good things happen. We always talk about not thinking of it as a loss, think of it as learning. Learn from what went wrong, and turn that into a positive next time.” His strategies have been working, evidently. Jack and Lucas have been with Hampton as players as long as Trotter has (which has been ever since they could play).

“I admire his love for athletics and his humor. He makes any sport he is my coach in enjoyable and helps me become not only a better athlete but also a better person,” says Wiggins. He went on to explain how easy Hampton is to talk to and how it’s obvious he only wants the best for his players. Lucas Waterworth also had good things to say. “I love that me and Coach Hampton both love a lot of the same interests with football and the Chiefs. I love coming to school and getting to talk to him about football. I also like that he always is joking around.”

In addition to being Varsity Football Head Coach, he’s also Head Coach of Varsity Girls Basketball. A huge accomplishment of Hamptons was his team winning state in the 2021-2022 season, another testament to his coaching skills. When asked about strategies and ideas that he would be implementing this year, he responded, “We had a really good year last year with several girls that really didn't have much Varsity experience. This year we returned several girls, so our experience will be better. The biggest thing I will be stressing is to be comfortable being uncomfortable. We need to get into a mindset of not settling and pushing to be the best that we can be.” On that side of his coaching career, living proof of his success as a coach is Megan Beckemeyer. She was an athlete of his the first year he coached at Wellington, and came back last season to assistant coach the team. That’s a past player's perspective. A current player?

This will be my fourth year as a player of Hamptons. It has always been a priority for him to make sure that we knew we were valued as players. I remember once, I think it was my sophomore year, we went to summer camp. As COVID restricted us from going to camp the year prior, I had never been to one before and was overwhelmed. I will never forget, when I started crying from being overwhelmed, instead of getting mad Hampton told me that crying showed him how much I cared about doing well. That’s always been something he’s stuck with- putting in extra time and effort because he cares. Not every coach decorates a playbook with stickers with our numbers. Not every coach holds a Christmas lock-in every year with gift cards and Wing Stop. Not every coach gives us “shots of defense” before every game, Gatorade in decorated cups with our numbers. All these little things show how much he cares.

In addition to being Head Coach of two varsity sports, he also teaches body conditioning. He feels he has more creative freedom than most teachers because his curriculum is “...based on progress and work ethic when we max out, compared to more critical thinking in the regular classroom.” He’s always trying to find new things to include in his curriculum. “The curriculum hasn't changed much, but technology has. I am constantly looking and researching different ways and techniques that can better benefit our students and athletes. I am a firm believer at our school in building the multi-sport athlete, and there are so many different ways to do that. Sometimes it's hard to get everything you want to do because of the time and space we have, but I feel like we get the most out of what we have to work with at a small school.”

Overall, we all appreciate what Hampton does and the time he takes to make sports and class enjoyable for us. Thank you, Hampton!