Knights Athletic Trainer Working Final Game at Buckley Stadium

Andy Wilson can tell a story, or a dozen, with the best of them. But, for a moment, there were no words.

In this instance, the tears that welled up in his eyes said plenty. They told of duty, dedication and longevity, and the end of an era.

Wilson, Harker Heights’ longtime head athletic trainer who’s retiring at the end of the semester in December, will work his final regular-season football game on the sideline of Leo Buckley Stadium when the Knights host Copperas Cove at 7 p.m. Thursday for a District 12-6A tilt.

It will be a full-circle moment for Wilson, 56, whose dad Al ‘Doc’ Wilson served 57 years as the Kangaroos lead athletic trainer and now has his name affixed to the Killeen fieldhouse. Andy spent his childhood at the venerable stadium, “I remember when it was a grass field,” he said, and his professional career began at Copperas Cove in 1990 about six months after he graduated from Angelo State University.

On Thursday, he’ll have family and former student trainers in attendance, the thought of which sprang those tears as he sat in his office inside Harker Heights’ athletic facility.

“Having kids that you worked with and/or taken care of that want to come back says a lot,” Wilson said, recalling numerous fond memories of athletes thanking him for helping them through injuries.

He said he’ll miss the student trainers most because he enjoyed sharing his passion and passing on knowledge he’d gained through 34 years as a professional and the many more as an aspiring trainer.

“I have to give credit where credit is due, to my second-grade teacher Ms. Pat Adams,” Wilson started, leaning back in his chair. “Ms. Adams, to get me to do what I needed to do, reading and homework and all that, she went to the store and bought an old, plastic doctor’s kit and told my dad to stock that up. If I did what I was supposed to do, I could go out at recess and be the trainer. She says that everybody came in that first day with a Band-Aid.

“I taped my first ankle in the sixth grade.”

Wilson attended Peebles Elementary, Manor and Rancier middle schools and was part of Killeen High’s Class of 1985.

After six years at Cove, he joined his dad’s staff at Killeen. They called the younger Wilson ‘Doc 2’ or ‘Baby Doc,’ and after 14 years, in 2000, he took the job with Harker Heights during the school’s first season.

That football season turned out to be special because the Knights, then guided by coach Ross Rogers as a Class 4A-II program, won a district title and advanced three rounds into the postseason to finish 10-3. Wilson hopped into his conversational time machine as he described the two playoff victories over Brenham and Beaumont Ozen, the latter in thrilling fashion, 29-28.

That segued into a memory of an encounter he had with a former player from that team, D.J. Jackson, which encapsulated everything Wilson’s career means to him.

“I was out one day umpiring adult softball and he comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, Doc, you look good,’ and asked if I was still at Heights. Then, he shows up here and says, ‘I know you were hard on me and gave me tough love, but thanks.’ I said, ‘That’s because I care about you,” Wilson recalled.

The motorcycle enthusiast who has taken his bike through 33 states so far, plans to spend part of his retirement working for Harley Davidson. That’ll be in between his high school baseball umpiring gigs.

His former students, though, always will remain close to his heart.

“I tell every one of my students, once you are a student trainer of mine, you’re my kid. I will treat you like one of my own kids,” he said. “No matter what they go into after high school, they are my kids and always will be. If they ever need me, they know how to get a hold of me and can come visit me any time.”