GREENFIELD — Two Greenfield-Central teams will have different looks at the top when the seasons begin in the coming weeks.
One is already familiar around the Greenfield-Central school corporation, while the other will be a brand new face.
Former Greenfield-Central boys golf coach Jeremy Spencer is now in charge of the girls team, and Candice Wyatt has taken over the volleyball program.
A four-year varsity middle hitter at Knightstown from 2014-2018, Wyatt didn’t play in college, instead deciding to focus on her academics. But while she stopped playing the sport, coaching was always on her mind and it didn’t take long for her to get back involved with the sport.
“One hundred percent, this was always the plan,” Wyatt said. “As soon as I was done with grad school, I wanted to coach at the varsity level, it just came a little sooner than expected. I much prefer the high school level, and there were two high school coaches that I had growing up that inspired me to get into coaching.”
As a junior in college, she took over the eighth grade volleyball team at Knightstown Junior High and coached there in 2019 and 2020.
In 2019, she also began coaching high school level club volleyball in Indianapolis at The Academy Volleyball Club. In 2022 and 2023, she was a coach at Eastern Hancock’s Lady Royals Volleyball Club.
Still in her second year of graduate school at Butler University, Wyatt planned on waiting until next year after finishing school to look for a varsity coaching position, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity at Greenfield-Central.
“I was kind of resistant at first because I’m still in grad school and have no idea what my schedule will be like month to month, so I was hesitant to take on this commitment,” Wyatt said. “But (Greenfield-Central athletic director) Jared [Manning] and (assistant director) Elizabeth [Mercer] were both very accommodating and said that they’d help me out as much as they can.”
The Cougars have had instability at the volleyball head coaching position over the past five years. Wyatt will be the team’s sixth head coach since 2018, and she saw that instability as her chance to take over a varsity program and begin to build a culture.
“I was going to wait until next year, but the opportunity came my way, and I saw the need at Greenfield-Central, especially with their revolving door of coaches lately,” Wyatt said. “They need someone that is going to be there for at least the next few years and help establish a program, and I saw that as my opportunity.”
While her plan was to wait another year, it was Greenfield-Central that heard about her and reached out about the position due to her connections with people around the school.
Former Greenfield-Central head coach, from 2016-2018, Travis Fuller is the director at The Academy, where Wyatt coached, and Mia Reed, a sophomore on the Greenfield-Central team, was on Wyatt’s club team.
“I basically learned everything I know about teaching technique and how to coach a team from him [Fuller],” Wyatt said.
Eventually the two sides got to talking, and Wyatt got started with the team in early June.
“At first it was a little hectic with club volleyball going, so I didn’t have a ton of numbers at first, but we’ve had some good practices lately,” Wyatt said. “The last two months have been really positive, and they’ve all been really accommodating to me and receptive of me so far.”
While Wyatt enters her first season at Greenfield-Central, Spencer has been around the Greenfield-Central golf program in the past, just on the boys side.
In 2015, he replaced Russ Wiley as the boys head coach. Now, nine years later, he’s taking over for him on the girls side.
He coached the Cougars boys team for five seasons, and over those years, he helped three individual golfers advance to regionals.
After having to step away for personal reasons, he’s back on the course four years later and ready to lead the girls team.
“The opportunity came back up, so I jumped on it,” Spencer said. “I had been looking for an opportunity to get back into coaching, and this ended up being the thing to get me back into it.”
Prior to coaching at Greenfield-Central, he was the coach of the Franklin Community Middle School team. Along with coaching, he has been a teacher for the past 22 years and has taught Tech Ed at Greenfield Junior High since 2013.
While he has yet to fully meet and practice with the team, he’s optimistic heading into his first season back as a head coach.
“From what I understand, it’s a very tight-knit group of girls together, and they’re very passionate about the game,” Spencer said. “I have confidence that we’ll be able to represent Greenfield very well this season.”
