Tellico announces new coaches in baseball, cross country, soccer, track and field

Tellico Plains announced three new head coaches on May 23.

A pair of coaches return to the head coaching role while soccer pairs a new face with a returning assistant.

Chris Hollinghead and Mitchel Witt return to helm the baseball program and the cross country and track and field programs, respectively.

Nathan Lynn will join as the faculty coach for Bears’ soccer with returning coach Martin Calvillo.

Baseball: Hollinghead — the winningest coach in Bears’ baseball program history based on available records, per the school — is set for his second stint with the program.

“I look for him to bring the experience he has back into the program. Heath Ware did an excellent job the past few years and Chris has him barely edged out (on wins),” Tellico athletic director Chris Brannon told The Advocate & Democrat. “Bringing that experience back to the field in order to be competitive … We have a very difficult district in all sports and hope to be competitive in there.”

Hollinghead holds 69 career wins, edging out Ware’s 66 wins over five years — including the shortened 2020 campaign.

“I am hoping to see us back towards the 10-win area. Historically, going back to the start of the baseball program, it has not been one of our more successful programs, so I hope to see that moving forward and being competitive,” Brannon added.

Since 2021, Tellico baseball has won 50 games — 23 of those come from a season that saw the Bears reach the sectional round in Class A before moving to a highly competitive Class 2A that features district foes in Kingston, McMinn Central, Meigs County, Sweetwater and previously Loudon.

Cross County and Track and Field: Witt is back at the helm of the two programs in Tellico, but his effect on the athletes over the years has always been there. He steps back into the head coaching role, a duty he thrived in from 1998 to 2012 after Barry Carroll resigned at the end of the 2024 season.

“I feel like he brings a wealth of knowledge in all of the years of coaching whether that be as a head coach or in the background helping to prepare those athletes for their events,” Brannon said.

Witt coached Josh Ball, Tellico track’s first state champion, winning the 300m Low Hurdles for Class A-AA in 2008.

Tellico has had multiple state champions since — Piper Carter in the 2019 Small Class Decathlon and Darrah Wiseman across six events in the past three seasons for Class A.

“We have Darrah coming back for her senior year, so we hope to continue on that success and build on that success for years to come,” Brannon said.

Since 1998, Tellico has made 11 appearances in the boys’ track and field state championships, seven in the girls’ track and field championship, three team appearances and eight individuals in boys’ cross country and two team appearances and six individuals in girls’ cross country.

Soccer: As Tellico continues to try to get soccer growing in the community, Lynn steps in to help the program reach its goals.

“I want to be able to continue to field a team every year. We want to get girls and boys both interested in those sports,” Brannon said. “We have athletes that are very capable of playing in this sport but, in our area and youth-league-wise, soccer is not a popular sport.”

Calvillo returns as a coach for the program as Miguel Ovalle departs. One of the challenges that the Bears’ program faces is the little to no experience that athletes may have around soccer by the time they arrive at the high school.

“The thing about Tellico is there is not much of a background of soccer as there is. You have basketball — everyone knows from Coach (Gary) Tucker up to Coach (Brooke) Evans — and the football program has had its time,” Lynn told The Advocate & Democrat. “There is nothing for soccer. Because of that, whenever kids do get to high school and want to try it. At the very least, Coach Calvillo and I are hoping to give them the basics and be able to build and make it a successful program.”

Lynn and Calvillo will handle both the girls’ program in the fall and the boys in the spring.

“I am hoping that Martin Calvillo and I can get the foundation laid for something that is going to last for a long time,” Lynn said.

Tellico will compete in District 3-A alongside Brainerd, CGLA, CSLA, McMinn Central, Polk County, Sweetwater and Tyner Academy.

“There is this crazy mindset in sports that you have coaches come in and instead of making a program fit the students, they try to make the students fit the program. Because Tellico does not have much of a background, we are hoping we can start from the basics and build there,” Lynn said.

“There are plenty of schools in the state that do not try to run with what they see on television. They keep to the basics and that is what we are going to try to do.”

The Polk County girls’ program reached the Class A Sectional this past season while the boys’ team from CSLA lost to eventual state champions Gatlinburg-Pittman in the Class A Sectional.

“From an early age, they are not really introduced to that, so to be competitive is a great task to me,” Brannon added.

Calvillo served as a developmental coach for youth soccer while in Florida.