Hornets in need of coaches and funds

The Beatty Hornets have a shortage of coaches. The school is down to three head coaches for the six sports in which they participate.

The high school was unable to get any outside coaches to the school for Aimee Senior who recently retired as head girls basketball coach.

Steve Sullivan, her assistant, will be filling this gap. Sullivan will be the head coach in two sports, volleyball and basketball.

Athletic Director Leo Verzilli will be head coach in three sports, football, basketball and baseball. He was hoping to get a new boys basketball coach to take up some slack, but had no takers.

Track will be coached by Jerry Adcox, who has coached track for some time now.

Verzilli had the position for a girls and boys coach in basketball posted all year long in hopes to get some desperately needed new blood at the school.

Despite the setback, Verzilli remains optimistic and is focused on preparing for the fall football season.

Verzilli said he will have a large freshman class coming in and this means more football players. Over 40 kids enrolled to play football at Beatty this year, almost double the number of players last year.

“We have maybe two seniors returning to the team, and three to four juniors. The team will be young, but most of the players have played football in junior high,” he said.

This brings up the problem of summer conditioning. Some problems Verzilli said never go away. The situation with the summer football practice schedule continues to be a problem.

Every year the Hornets lose a game or two off their schedule because kids from Amargosa have no way of coming to summer conditioning for football.

“We are going to start practice the week before school starts,” the coach said. “We will get three full weeks of practice before our first game. We will start the Monday before school starts. For one week I am asking them to find a ride. I am hoping they all come out and carpool. We will see what happens.”

In addition to player problems, the Beatty Hornets must also contend with the lack of up–to-date uniforms.

“Uniforms are a pretty big chunk of money,” he said. “We get allocated what the school allocates us and what we make from gate sales. The NIAA comes out with regulations dealing with uniforms and the size of the lettering and the style. In our case, the style and coloring is on the illegal side. We are looking to get at least new tops, which run from $65-$100 per uniform, plus you need two, away and home.”

The lists of needs keep piling on and are many at Beatty High School. The athletic department hopes to get donations for a new scorekeeper’s table for volleyball and basketball as well.

The coach said each team will be doing various fundraisers to help their sport during the season.

Despite its recent state title, the track team is in need of funds too. Verzilli says this program is the most expensive to run out of all the sports.

He said each track meet in Clark County costs up to $300 to attend and at 10 meets a year this is a big chunk, which Beatty does not have. In the past, Jerry Adcox said much of the money had come from his own pocket, something he no longer can afford.

Verzilli said Superintendent of Nye County Schools Dale Norton is working on several solutions. One solution calls for Beatty to have some home meets at Pahrump Valley High School when the Trojans are away.

At the moment, Beatty has no home meets because the field has no cage around the shot put and discus area, and this is a requirement.

Having home meets brings much needed funds to the program from gate and concession stands. This can be used to offset the expense of away track meets.

Verzilli has said the district does plan to help out with the cage requirement.

Verzilli said the district has made some large repairs already to their aging turf on the football field.

Beatty is always looking for donations to its athletic programs.