The Van Buren baseball team will be headed in a different direction the next time it takes the field.
David Loyd recently announced his retirement, ending his 15-year tenure as Van Buren's baseball coach. Luke Weatherford -- Loyd's assistant for the past 11 seasons -- was promoted to lead the Pointers as they head into the 5A-West Conference next season.
"I'm very excited about this move and looking forward to this," Weatherford said. "I think Coach Loyd has this team going in the right direction, and I'm excited to try to keep things going the way they are."
Loyd's retirement caps a 36-year career in teaching and coaching that began in Louisiana. He spent two years in Lavaca and 11 more in Greenwood before he went to a school in the Austin, Texas, area for two years. He also spent five years at Fort Smith Southside before he took over at Van Buren.
He said retirement is something he had thought about "for the last year or so." He plans to spend the extra time doing things he hadn't been able to do previously, and he'll spend a lot more time outdoors -- whether to play golf, hunt or fish. Traveling is also on his itinerary.
"It was a hard, tough decision," Loyd said of retiring. "I wasn't sure I was going to do it with the way this season ended so soon. I took some time to sit and think about it, and that's when I made up my mind that this was going to be it. I then told the players through Zoom, and it went better than I thought.
"I'll miss the relationships I've had with the kids and the teachers, and I'll miss the competition of the games. That was always fun. I've had a great run here, and I was fortunate the kids bought into what I wanted to do. We weren't the most talented, but we stressed good fundamentals and being tough on the field."
The day after Loyd announced his retirement, Weatherford received a phone call from the school's athletic director, Randy Loyd, and was asked to come to the school for an interview.
At the end of the interview, Weatherford received and accepted his promotion to head coach.
"That made me feel good that the school moved so quickly," Weatherford said. "They expressed to me how much they appreciated my loyalty to Coach Loyd and the program. They felt I had done a good job, and it was reassuring to me they had no doubts in me."
He will lead the Pointers into the 5A-West after they had been the smallest school in the state's largest classification for a number of years.
"I'm excited about the school's move to the 5A-West. Dropping down in classification is something we've talked about among the coaches, and I think it will help Van Buren out in all sports," he said. "I know I am familiar with the teams, and I know the coaches in this conference. They're good coaches, and this will be a good league for us."
Weatherford said he will make small changes as head coach, but he plans on keeping the same concepts that Loyd used for the past few years.
"We'll play the same way the program has been built around," Weatherford said. "We want to outplay people. I share a lot of the similar beliefs that Coach Loyd had, and I believe that will give us a chance to win some games."
Sports on 04/29/2020