Ronnie Olson has played or coached all over Raleigh County.
He started his high school days playing basketball in Beckley before transferring to Independence where he helped the Patriots to the Class AA title game in 2000. This past May he guided Shady Spring to its first basketball title in school history, so sports in the county are pretty important to him.
He wants to make sure the next generation gets to experience that as well.
Due to COVID, the elementary students in Raleigh County didn’t have that opportunity last year and as of now they will have to wait until the spring.
Olson figured out a solution, creating the Raleigh County Elementary Sports Development League, giving elementary students in the county a chance to have a basketball and volleyball season.
“This is two years in a row sports have been pushed back for elementary sports in Raleigh County,” Olson said. “There were a lot of people upset with the decision to push it back to spring and they said that last year. I felt responsible as a coach in our community and county to try and take it on myself and make sure the kids get to play. A lot of people were upset about it and me personally, my daughter was as well. She’s in fourth grade this year and she was going to try out for the volleyball team last year for her first year but couldn’t because of COVID.
“She didn’t get to go and this year was the same. And I have some feeder program kids coming up here and they’re not going to get to play for two years. Some kids don’t have the ability or money to play travel ball or aau and it kind of leaves these kids not having a place to play. I just felt like it was the right thing to do. Nobody has anywhere to play volleyball of basketball so I wasn’t going to stick to just basketball, so we – Kevin Malay who’s the new Shady Spring Elementary coach – decided to get this together so the kids could play.”
The league itself isn’t affiliated with any schools, but teams will be assembled based on school district. As a result the league can’t utilize the school facilities but given that county residents have been invested in sports for decades, garnering support wasn’t difficult at all.
“It helps that we can do something for every single school because it’s going to help everybody,” Olson said. “And after everything we went through with being shutdown, I figured I’d create a Facebook page. The last time I checked we had over 18,000 views on it. People are sharing and we have over 200 kids signed up for it and we don’t even have the first day of evaluations until next week. I’ve had a bunch of people that have thanked me and appreciate it. Obviously it helps my program and other people’s programs, but it helps everybody in the county. From the corners of Glen Daniel to Beckley to Ghent to Coal City – everybody supports it. I’m excited and we’ve even had people contact me from outside of our county.
“I told them we’ll see, but we’re one of the few counties in the state that still offers elementary sports. There’s a coaching shortage for both sports, but the support has been awesome. (Sophia mayor) Sam Allen, he called me and offered to let me use the gym because where Lester and Ridgeview combined, the city owns it now. Brian Helton and (Greater Beckley basketball coach) Justin Arvon have been awesome about offering the gyms and we’ll be using Memorial Baptist as well. People have stepped up and helped with it.”
As far as the structure and age groups, Olson has an idea of what he wants the league to be. The league will accept students in grades two through five and will hold evaluations in each district. There will be a Gold Division and Blue Division that pits athletes against more level competition. The decision to do so was deliberate.
“Honestly I’d rather a kid get to play than sit on the bench on a really good team,” Olson said. “They’re supposed to enjoy it and playing is how they get better. My wife created an online document where people could register and it populates it geographically. Even now, before people sign up last minute as they tend to do, we’re looking at 10 to 12 elementary schools already. Just basketball teams alone. Our league is going to be a little different. We want to have that same school spirit and geographical sense where everyone gets to play together, but we’re not going to cut any kids.
“Any kids that don’t make the blue division, they’ll get to play in the gold division. It’s all about developing their skills. We’re going to offer that so every kid gets to play and won’t be turned away. They’ll get to play on their skill level. I know we have enough for so many schools, but we will have to combine some. Offhand I know Shady, Ridgeview and Daniels have 15 to 20 kids signed up for each school then you have some schools that might have one or two schools signed up and we’ll merge them together based on feeder program so they can get accustomed to playing together like they would in middle school.”
While most of that applies to basketball, volleyball will be a little different.
“We’re just not going to do that by school,” Olson said. “We have enough girls signed up for plenty of teams, but we don’t have enough to do it school by school so we’ll put those in evaluation and break those evenly so they’ll still get to play.”
The cost of registration is $60 per student and each athlete will receive a team t-shirt. The goal is to play anywhere from eight to 10 games and follow it with the Raleigh County postseason tournament.
Games will be played Monday through Wednesday to avoid conflicting with football. Students who are homeschooled or attend a private school are welcome as well, but will be grouped into the district in which they live. For those who don’t register online you can register the day of your district’s evaluation. A full schedule of evaluation times is attached below. For more information please visit the “Raleigh County Elementary Sports Development” page on Facebook.
Contact Tyler Jackson at tylerjackson@lootpress.com, call him at 304-731-5542 and follow on Twitter @tjack94
Wednesday 8-25
5 p.m.- 5:45 p.m. Hollywood and Crescent
5:45 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. Maxwell Hill and Ghent
6:30 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. Shady Spring
7:15 p.m. – 8 p.m. Daniels
8 p.m. – 9 p.m. Bradley/Cranberry/Beckley/ Stanaford
Thursday 8-26
5 p.m. – 6:45 p.m. All volleyball participants
6:45 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Marsh Fork/Clear Fork / Fairdale
7:30 p.m. – 8:15 p.m. Ridgeview/ Mabscott/Coal City