Ridgeland High SchoolWesley Tankersley is one of those people who has always known the path his professional life would take. The 33-year-old's high-rising football coaching career is taking another step forward with his hiring as the new head coach at Ridgeland High School Wednesday.
The former Gilmer County coach will replace Mark Mariakis, who resigned after 11 seasons in which his teams won four region titles and finished as the Class AAAA runner-up in 2012. Tankersley, an Ellijay, Ga., native who was a player and graduate at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, says the opportunity was too good to pass up.
"It's an opportunity to be in a program with a ton of potential in an area my wife and I love," said Tankersley, whose final four Gilmer teams had a combined 32-12 record, the final three ending in the playoffs. "They've already had some great successes, so it's a chance to build on that success. It will be an opportunity for my wife, too. She's been a stay-at-home mom for our three kids (ages 9, 7 and 4). Our youngest will be starting school soon so my wife will have a greater opportunity to find a job in Chattanooga."
Ridgeland athletic director Rob Stinson said Tankersley was chosen out of a group of applicants that numbered over 100 in what he called an extensive search.
"Coach Tankersley excited a lot of people when he came here to be interviews," Stinson said. "He's very articulate, and he will electrify the area. It was an extremely thorough search that involved over 50 people. We had a committee of 10, and all the candidates met with community leaders as well.
"We were looking for somebody who would continue the tradition already established by Coach Mariakis, and that starts with building character first. If you're doing things the right way and you're building on character, the wins will come naturally. You could win with shortcuts, but that's not the Ridgeland way. All of our candidates could have come in and been a home run in that area."
Tankersley began his coaching career shortly after graduating from UTC in 2005 after approaching current Dade County coach Bradley Warren when he was the head coach at Central Gwinnett in suburban Atlanta. Warren was immediately impressed.
"Coach Tankersley came to me at the Dome one year and introduced himself and said he wanted to coach with me," said Warren, who also coached with Tankersley at Gilmer for one season. "We had a secondary opening at Central Gwinnett, and I remembered our conversation and I hired him. I loved his work ethic, so we hit it off right away.
"He's going to work hard. He's a fun young coach for kids to be around. He's a very good defensive-minded coach, so I'm sure he will work on that side of the ball. He will bring in some very good offensive people, and the folks at Ridgeland are going to be pleased."
Tankersley will soon begin building a staff and evaluating the more than 120 athletes in the program. Like Ridgeland under Mariakis, the new coach's teams have run a wing-T style offense, but this past season the Bobcats incorporated some spread looks. It's something that likely will follow him to Ridgeland.
"I want to come in and evaluate the talent a bit more and see what we have before I commit to schemes," he said. "From the outside looking in I would like to run more of a spread, wing-T attack similar to what we ran last year. With the talent there, from what I've seen, that is something that would maximize that talent. We're still talking about the staff. They've got some great guys on the staff that I would love to work with."
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6296.