GPS athletic director Jay Watts coaches the school's basketball team during a game in January 2018. Watts will use his skills as a lacrosse coach to lead Poland's women's national team.
Mark WiedmerEver been to Poland? Neither has Jay Watts. But all that's about to change for the Girls Preparatory School athletic director.
Within the next few days, Watts will head to the central European country for two weeks to begin its women's national lacrosse program.
Before anyone in Bruisers Nation panics, it's strictly a part-time deal. Maybe five weeks a year max.
"They don't have physical education in the schools the way we do in the United States," said Watts, who won nine state championships, was a runner-up on five other occasions and compiled a 338-44-7 record during his 19 years overseeing the Westminster lacrosse program in Atlanta.
"The goal is to try to get a team ready for the Women's Lacrosse World Cup in Baltimore in 2021."
Background is in order here. The ultimate goal of the International Federation of Lacrosse is to make it an Olympic sport. The federation currently has 60 members, including countries as diverse as Cuba and Latvia.
"This job with Poland came open last fall," Watts said. "I applied online and had a video interview. I found out in February I'd been chosen to coach the team."
Somewhat amazingly, he's not the only coach from the Scenic City to embrace European lacrosse. McCallie School assistant coach Eamon Thornton, who also teaches English at the private boys' school, just wrapped up a stretch working with the Swiss national men's team.
"These aren't high-paying jobs," Watts said with a grin. "It's basically expenses. I'll be over there for two weeks in August, then probably return for a week during our spring break. Then we'll compete in the European Women's Championship in Tel Aviv, Israel, next summer."
If anyone has lived the phenomenal growth of lacrosse throughout the South the past three decades it's Watts, who was on the first team McCallie ever fielded in 1989.
"Hank Lewis was the head coach and David Hughes (currently the director of McCallie's scholars program) was his assistant," Watts said. "I still call David 'Coach Hughes.'"
Watts knew so little about the sport at that time, he admits, "I never saw a game until I played in one. We weren't very good. We couldn't throw and catch very well. But it was new and it was fast. It was like football with a weapon."
Watts soon headed off to college at William & Mary, and the McCallie program brought in Troy Kemp to turn it into a Mid-South juggernaut, winning 12 state championships. Fast-forward to 1996, and Watts volunteered to be a lacrosse assistant at Westminster. By 1999 he was teaching 63 girls how to play the sport.
"The rules are far different," Watts said. "Unlike the boys, they don't wear helmets. It's referred to as a noncontact sport, though it's really more of a noncollision sport. Girls' lacrosse is more like soccer. Boys' lacrosse is more like ice hockey."
Though Watts won't know exactly how good his team can be until he gets to Poland, he has watched European women's lacrosse, having attended the Women's World Cup nine years ago in Prague, Czech Republic, as a U.S. volunteer ambassador.
"I'd never been to Europe before," he said. "It was amazing."
He also got a possible glimpse of what he'll be dealing with as he shapes the Polish team.
"The Czech women were having circles run around them," Watts recalled. "But they were so excited to be out there."
Asked how much lacrosse his players may already know, he said: "They have a club league. I'm told some of them have played six months and others have played several years. Some of the players are supposed to be in their teens and some in their 30s. There may even be a few in their 40s."
Watts said he has been assured most of the players' English is very good. And if not, the Polish club coach is supposed to be fluent in both Polish and English. Watts also will have an assistant coach from Connecticut.
Of communicating with those assistants, Watts chuckled and said, "Hopefully, they'll understand Southern English."
Even if it's a part-time, expenses-only gig, he's more than a little excited to learn about another part of the world.
"Just to learn some of their language, their culture," Watts said. "Just standing for their national anthem. I won't take that lightly."
He does admit to one minor problem. Poland's colors are red and white, not terribly unlike GPS's archrival Baylor, which favors red and gray.
"I've decided it's OK to wear red while I'm out of the country," he said with a smile.
It's what he'll choose to wear when Poland reaches Baltimore in 2021 that could prove interesting.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.