By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

In baseball terms, Chip Champion has been a five-tool player at Westfield.

OK, more than five, and more than just on the sidelines. Now, the school has more to worry about than just replacing the 11-year athletics director.

Champion is stepping down as athletics director and do-it-all at the end of the school year, to tend to family land in Worth County with his sister.

Champion is being replaced by Mark Ledford, who went 111-83-1 in 17 seasons as head football coach at Wilcox County, from 2001-17, with five region titles and a state championship.

Replacing Champion is to have to fill in multiple roles. All over.

In addition to teaching history and physical education, Champion has been the varsity girls basketball head coach, varsity boys basketball head coach, middle school football coach, boys track and field, and now tennis at Westfield.

And the Tiftarea Academy graduate has been the high school’s director of buildings and grounds, and director of transportation.

Now, though, family calls.

“I grew up on a farm,” Champion said. “When I graduated high school, my dad told me to go find something else to learn, just in case the farming gig didn’t work out.

Ledford taking over as AD

          Champion is being replaced by Mark Ledford, who went 111-83-1 in 17 seasons as head football coach at Wilcox County, from 2001-17, with five region titles and a state championship.
Ledford’sHis Wilcox County days ended after the 2017 season, a 2-8 year and the Patriots’ fifth straight losing season after six straight years of at least 10 wins. Before that late stretch, Ledford was 100-44.
          He has since coached at Tift County, Crisp County, and Tiftarea, the latter of which is his current location, as the private school’s 7th- and 8th-grade head football coach and varsity assistant.
          Ledford posted the move on his Facebook page on Jan. 27 with a graphic on the announcement, though the school hasn’t posted anything on its Facebook or Twitter pages, or school website.
          It did post a three-paragraph announcement in its Jan. 26 edition of “The Westfield Weekly”, a Constant Contact email newsletter.
          The addition gives Westfield three athletics department staff members with GHSA football state championships.
          New head football coach Chad Campbell led Peach County to the trophy in 2009, and assistant football coach Lee Campbell steered Hawkinsville to titles in 2003-04.

“I did that, got into coaching, and 26 years later, here I am, still going at it.”

Champion still did a little work on the family farm during summers, the farming gig clearly still working out for the Champion family, the gig continuing into Champion Groves, now having passed 80 years in business.

His dad was in the Pecan Growers Association, and was a Certified Crop Advisor, as well as connected to the Georgia Agribusiness Council and Georgia Plant Food Educational Society.

But James Perry Champion III passed away in October of 2021 in Sylvester at the age of 77.

Chip and his sister Fran, who is a teacher at Westwood in Camilla – about 40 minutes from their childhood home - soon began some oversight from a distance of the 1,200 acres the family owned and another 1,500 acres it rented.

“We’ve got some guys actually physically running the farm right now,” Champion said. “But obviously labor shortages and everything else, it’s become a little bit of a struggle.

“It just became clear that now is the time for me to go down there and do that.”

He’ll be overseeing about 300 acres of pecan trees, and then cotton, corn, and peanuts covering the rest.

“It’s not a big operation, but it’s not a small operation,” he said. “It’s a definite task.”

Things have changed in those 26 years since he spent a lot of time in the field.

“There are some things that have changed,” he said. “I’m having to learn some things on the fly, that’s for sure. Technology has made life a lot easier, but at the same time, the business side probably has gotten a lot more complex.”

But Champion is used to adjusting.

He started at his alma mater in 1996 as a teacher, and then boys basketball head coach, boys and girls head track coach, head middle school football coach, and golf and boys and girls tennis.

At Piedmont, from 2002-06, he coached girls and boys basketball – both at the same time for three years – as well as football, track, and tennis.

“I can remember at Piedmont being in that gym sometimes for five or six hours a day,” he said. “Makes for a long day, I can promise you.”

He returned to Tiftarea from 2006-12.

Upon moving to Westfield, he was supposed to be just the AD, but had the grounds and transportation duties added.

“Added” is almost his middle name.

“Along the way, I think I’ve coached here, let me think,” and he paused for a breath. “I’ve coached middle school girls and boys basketball, varsity girls and boys basketball, I’m coaching tennis now, I’ve done track.

“A little bit of everything along the way.”

That includes classroom time, too, teaching history, health/phys ed, science, and government at some point. He has also serving as principal and AD at Tiftarea during his second stint, and head of school and assistant head of school at Piedmont.

He coached girls varsity basketball for four years – the plan was for two years, but it turned in to four – at Westfield and filled in as the boys head coach for a year and a half. He did track for eight years, his longest stint as a head coach at Westfield.

“I’m doing tennis this year, because we didn’t have anybody,” he said.

Of course he is.

All of those teams, all of that gap-filling, all of those times serving as human duct tape – “Sucker maybe, I don’t know what,” he laughed - Champion has no idea what any of his win-loss totals are.

“That’s not what it was about,” said Champion, whose wife Leigh Ann works at Westfield and daughter Claire is a junior. “Obviously winning and losing are important, but to me, it wasn’t about that. It was about developing kids, giving them a great experience and teaching them along the way.

“Hopefully some of the kids I’ve coached over the years will have a little bit of an appreciation for the game, but have learned more about life than about ball.”