Successful coaches ready to lead Burnet athletes to continued triumphs

CAPTION: Burnet Middle School coach Sonny Wilson is back on the Burnet gridiron this fall. Staff photos by Jennifer Fierro

Two Burnet Consolidated Independent School District fall sports conducted their camps last week with both high school and middle school coaches present.

Boys middle school athletic coordinator Mark Zeigler and the middle school coaches including Sonny Wilson were at the football camp, while Casey Schubert and Marci Clanin were with volleyball.

Though Wilson was named the middle school girls athletic coordinator, he will coach football in the fall before coaching middle school basketball and sitting on head coach Kim Payten’s bench during the high school season.

Schubert, a former high school volleyball head coach, Clanin and Brooke Sackett, a new hire, will coach middle school volleyball in the fall.

“I believe coach Sackett was a coordinator at one point and she had big roles over in Leander,” Wilson said. “Coach Clanin has grown so much, so I’m in a really good position with coaches this year. You want me to go football, I can go football, but basketball and track are my things. I can just go wherever (I’m) needed. And then coach Peyton has asked, ‘hey, would you want to come be on the bench with us during varsity games and come in and help?’ And I really have to get back to high school basketball at some point, because I’m chomping at the bit to get back but also at the same time, I know where our program is right now and I’m a firm believer that to fix things you have to get things good at the bottom before you can get good at the top and we’re in the grind process right now.”

The Burnet girls basketball team missed the playoffs last season for the first time in almost two decades. Payten, who took over the program last summer, is teaching the Lady Dawgs a completely new and different system than what they’ve played before.

“I commend her for what she’s doing,” Wilson said. “I want to be there for her because No. 1, I want to get back with high school basketball, regardless of what it is. But No. 2, I just want to help get the program back going in the right direction. I don’t care what kind of part I have right now. I just want to help and be involved.”

He noted that middle school coach Kendal Connolly, who was a member of the 2018-19 Burnet girls basketball team that reached the Class 4A state tournament, “was my right hand man” last year.

“She coached a couple games by herself,” he said. “She’s a new coach, so she’s trying to learn her voice and learn who she is. I’m going to disperse a lot of things out, I’m going to give a lot of our coaches ownership of the program. I just want us to be successful in everything we do. I’m going to continue to just do what we’ve been doing last year and building off what we did. We had an incredible track season, incredible basketball season. My biggest thing is kind of perfecting our craft now and letting our coaches work. It’s going to be an incredible year.”

CAPTION: Burnet Middle School coach Marci Clanin is one of several volleyball staff members at two-a-days.