Terry Pitts

From Mentored to Mentors: Mariner Coaches Pay Championship Lessons Forward

Submitted by Bryan F. Williams, Coach, Mariner Leadership Academy (JROTC)

A culture of mentorship helped build Mariner’s championship program. Now its coaches are working to multiply that investment across junior marksmanship.

Before Mariner High School became a JROTC National Champion, before the state championships and national titles, and before coaches began traveling to Southwest Florida to attend its annual Army Marksmanship Unit Coaching Clinic, Major (Ret.) Bryan Williams and Coach Marybeth Williams were simply two coaches with an ambitious vision and a lot to learn.

They wanted to build a championship program.

Fortunately, some of the most successful coaches in junior marksmanship were willing to show them how.

That spirit of mentorship became part of the foundation of Mariner’s program. Years later, it is also helping shape what the Williamses hope will become part of their legacy: successful coaches helping the next generation of coaches build programs of their own.

Learning From Those Who Came Before

When the Williamses began developing Mariner’s program, they did not attempt to figure everything out alone.

One of their earliest mentors was SFC (Ret.) Riess Pellegrino, the longtime rifle coach at Sarasota Military Academy and a former state and national championship coach.

During Mariner’s first year, Pellegrino took the Williamses under his wing. He shared best practices, answered questions and invested significant time with the new coaches during their first regional and national-level competitions.

The lessons extended beyond shooting technique. The Williamses were learning how established programs trained, organized, developed athletes and created cultures capable of sustaining excellence.

Other championship programs followed Pellegrino’s example.

Former Ozark High School coach William Crawford and members of his national championship team spent time mentoring Mariner’s young athletes and coaches.

At Nation Ford High School, legendary coach Col. Sean Mulcahy shared training materials, files and ideas from a program that accumulated one of the most remarkable championship records in junior marksmanship.

Granbury High School coach Scott Casey, whose program became a dominant force in precision air rifle, shared best practices, encouragement and mentorship throughout Mariner’s development.

In Florida, Steve Beck of Mulberry High School, an Army service champion and multiple-time state championship coach, was another of Mariner’s earliest mentors, openly sharing lessons and practical advice that could help a developing program improve.

There was no requirement for any of them to do it. They were competitors. But they shared anyway. That made an impression.

A Championship Vision Takes Shape

Major and Coach Williams had envisioned building a championship-caliber program from the beginning. What they quickly discovered, however, was that championships rarely emerge from a single coaching philosophy or one breakthrough idea.

They are built through years of learning.

The Williamses borrowed ideas, asked questions, made mistakes, adapted systems and gradually developed a model that fit Mariner’s athletes and culture.

Eventually, the results followed.

Mariner captured the 2024 JROTC National Sporter Air Rifle Championship, becoming the top JROTC sporter team in the nation.

That championship became part of a larger run that has included multiple national championships and eight Florida state titles.

But something else had been developing alongside the trophies.

The Williamses remembered the coaches who had opened their notebooks, shared their training philosophies, answered their phone calls and stood beside them at matches when Mariner was still trying to figure out how championship programs operated.

The question became: How could Mariner do the same for others?

Their answer was not simply to mentor another team. They wanted to scale mentorship.

Taking Mentorship to Another Level

Four years ago, Coach Marybeth Williams and retired Sgt. 1st Class George Norton helped launch what became the Army Marksmanship Unit Coaching Clinic at Mariner High School.

The idea was simple: bring coaches together and give them access to exceptional instruction, proven practices and one another.

Rather than forcing developing coaches to learn everything through trial and error, create an environment where knowledge could be deliberately passed from experienced marksmen and successful coaches to the people responsible for developing the next generation of athletes.

The clinic has now reached well beyond Southwest Florida. Coaches from five states have traveled to Mariner to participate.

This year’s clinic brought together 18 coaches and 20 athletes, continuing a four-year effort to develop not only better shooters, but better coaches.

That distinction is important. An athlete who receives excellent instruction benefits individually. A coach who receives excellent instruction may return home and influence dozens of athletes over the next several years.

The Williamses see that multiplier effect as one of the most powerful ways established programs can strengthen junior marksmanship.

Coaches Developing Coaches

The clinic also reflects an evolution in the Williamses’ own philosophy.

Their early goal was straightforward: build a championship program at Mariner. Today, their vision is broader.

Winning still matters. Mariner’s athletes train to compete at the highest level, and the standards inside the program remain demanding. But championships have also given the program a platform.

Two years ago, Major and Coach Williams presented their Building a Championship Program message to Army JROTC instructors during the U.S. Army Cadet Command 6th Brigade Florida Summer Workshop.

Their message went beyond marksmanship technique. They discussed the organizational elements that allow youth programs to succeed over time – vision, culture, standards, leadership, athlete development, training systems and the deliberate development of young people.

It was another opportunity to take lessons accumulated through years of mentorship, experimentation and competition and put them into the hands of other leaders.

The Williamses see the AMU Coaching Clinic as an even larger expression of that responsibility.

“We didn’t build this program by ourselves,” Major Williams said. “Some very successful coaches gave us their time when there was absolutely nothing in it for them. They opened their programs to us, shared what worked and helped us avoid mistakes they had already learned from. That changed our trajectory.”

It also established an expectation.

“When people invest in you like that, eventually you have an obligation to turn around and invest in somebody else.”

Creating More Opportunities

The coaching clinic is not Mariner’s only effort to expand access to high-level development.

This summer, the school also hosted a Civilian Marksmanship Program Junior Rifle Camp. Registration filled almost immediately, demonstrating the demand for high-quality training opportunities for junior athletes in Florida.

Together, the CMP camp and AMU Coaching Clinic are helping establish Mariner as more than the home range of a successful JROTC rifle team. It is increasingly becoming a place where athletes and coaches come to learn.

That distinction matters to Coach Williams.

Marybeth Williams has served as the architect of much of Mariner’s competitive training program and culture. Her athletes have won at the highest levels of JROTC and junior marksmanship, but her influence increasingly extends beyond the athletes wearing Mariner colors.

Through clinics, camps, presentations and countless informal conversations at competitions, the Williamses are now doing for other coaches what Pellegrino, Crawford, Mulcahy, Casey, Beck and others once did for them.

They are opening the notebook.

The Championship Cycle

There is an irony in competitive shooting.

Teams spend countless hours preparing to defeat one another, yet some of the strongest programs in the sport have also been remarkably willing to help their competitors improve.

Mariner is a product of that culture.

The Williamses believe preserving it is essential to the future of junior marksmanship.

A coach shares an idea. Another coach adapts it. An athlete improves. A program grows. Eventually, that athlete or coach teaches someone else. And the cycle continues.

For Major and Coach Williams, that may ultimately be a more meaningful measure of success than another championship banner hanging inside Mariner High School.

Their program began with a vision of becoming champions. Along the way, mentors taught them something bigger:

Championship programs don’t just build winners. They build people who eventually help others win.