🎧Coaching, umpiring and education…GBHS assistant principal Wetzel retiring

By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post

When Great Bend High School Assistant Principal Randy Wetzel thought about retiring, he figured it would be easy. Knowing that he really enjoyed what he was doing, the people he worked with and loved the kids, that decision became tougher. Wetzel knows he will miss his job with USD 428, but officially announced his retirement that will take effect at the end of the school year.

“I got to thinking, there are a lot of things my wife and I would like to do,” said Wetzel. “You get to a certain age and you start thinking about your mortality and do you have time to do those things. I decided it was time.”

Wetzel will retire after spending the past 20 years as the high school’s assistant principal. Growing up in Great Bend, Wetzel attended Park Elementary, Roosevelt Junior High and Great Bend High School. After attending Barton Community College, Wetzel wanted to get into education to quench his thirst of coaching.

“I wanted to coach basketball,” Wetzel said. “I had some teachers that were really special to me. I could see how a teacher could be important to somebody.”

Out of college, Wetzel was hired by Ell-Saline High School in Brookville, Kansas with a starting pay of $8,900 a year. Wetzel was able to guide the boys’ basketball team at Ell-Saline to a state championship in his three years.

He then spent three years at Russell High School, followed by three years as an assistant coach for the Seward County Community College men’s basketball team. Wetzel then served as an assistant for the University of Texas – Pan American, which is now called University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

“Some things happened with the job in Texas and I resigned thinking I had another job lined up,” said Wetzel. “Things did not work out and I came back home to Great Bend to farm with my brother-in-law.”

Wetzel was asked to manage the alternative school in Great Bend and while working there he applied and accepted the assistant principal position with GBHS.

“I had no plans on getting into the administration side of education,” said Wetzel. “I wanted to stay in the classroom and avoid all the headaches of that, but running the alternative school gave me a different perspective. I realized you could help more kids than just the ones in your classroom.”

Wetzel mentioned he took several graduate-level classes to prepare him for administrator’s job.

“Those classes are nothing like the real world,” joked Wetzel. “You have a plan, think you know what you are going to do and it will change. You react to quite a bit of things in a quick amount of time.”

Along with the more typical duties of an assistant principal, Wetzel dove into state testing and career and technical education.

“I always wanted to give students as many options as possible for classes,” said Wetzel. “The job shadow program has allowed kids to test what they want to do and sometimes find out that they do not like it. It is better to find out now than spend money at college to find that out.”

Wetzel is still working to beef up their internship program that would include a relationship with the Great Bend Fire Department and Police Department to help foster local interest in becoming a first responder.

Retiring with decades of experience in education, Wetzel is also a retired baseball umpire.

“Elmo Lowry in Great Bend taught me to do the Rec stuff and vouched for me as an umpire,” said Wetzel. “Living in Salina while working in Brookville, I told some guys that refereed our basketball games that I could umpire.”

In a sporting goods store during one summer in Salina, Wetzel was asked if he still wanted to try umpiring.

“I said yes and they said ‘good, you’re umpiring a game in McPherson in a few hours,’” said Wetzel.

His umpiring career blossomed to working games in the Big 8, eventually the Big 12 and even College World Series contests.

“Being there in Omaha, Nebraska for the College World Series in front of 30,000 people, being on national television and working the first game at the new stadium was a highlight,” said Wetzel. “You can’t top it.”

Wetzel umpired for 35 years before retiring in 2014. Working both in education and traveling across the country to umpire games, created quite the balancing act for the former Great Bend Panther.

“I had some bosses that were very supportive of it,” said Wetzel. “I had one supervisor tell me Great Bend received good press from it when we were on TV and it was mentioned where we were from.”

“Being gone every weekend was hard on my family life. I missed a lot things that I wish I would not have. That is another reason why I am retiring, I want to make it up to wife and I have grandkids that I love to death.”

With school getting close to the end, Wetzel is starting to realize all of the “lasts” in his career.

“We have prom in a couple weeks, that will be my last prom,” Wetzel said. “I have reports I need to do, that will be the last time I have to do those. You start to think if you made the right decision because I will miss a lot of it.”

Wetzel plans on taking retirement as it goes. He noted he might help out a few area farmers if they need a tractor or truck driver and possibly volunteer around the town.

“That is the beauty of being retired,” added Wetzel. “You can do what you want, when you want.”

Listen below to the entire interview with Wetzel and Eagle Radio's Cole Reif.

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