Paige Grey making major impact on the Pleasant Grove Athletic Department

TEXARKANA, TX  (KTAL/KMSS) — We’re celebrating remarkable women all month long, and one of those is Pleasant Grove’s Paige Grey. To call her just a coach or teacher goes nowhere near doing her justice. Her fingerprints can be found all over the athletic department.

Grey wears a lot of hats and one that says Lady Hawk Track is just one of them.

“She’s really good at pushing us to our limits and making sure we can perform our best,” junior track and volleyball player Riley Byrne said.

“I love Coach Grey. I really look up to her and have a lot of respect for her,” said senior track and volleyball player Reese Gibbs. “She knows so much about track.”

For Grey, its all about having a positive impact on the students.

“I like the relationships I get to build with the kids. I like getting to be a small part of their life,” Grey said.

Since Grey took over the track team six years ago, the program has grown from eight girl to now 42 girls.  In addition to track, Grey also helps coach volleyball and had an impact on this years team, which made it to the fourth round of playoffs, the furthest any team has gone in a few years. 

“She’s mainly the defensive coach, and I’m a setter and so defense doesn’t come super naturally to me and she’s very good at defense, she knows, she’s clear,” Gibbs said.

Coaching that group of girls had come very easy to Grey.

“Getting to be around them, it didn’t matter when it ended, it wouldn’t have mattered if we went all the way, it would’ve been too short of an amount of time,” Grey said. “But I’m glad we got to go as long as we did with that group.”

If you’ve ever taken a scroll through the PG Athletic social medias, Grey’s sports marketing classes have a hand in that.

“For me, it was just seeing how far out our social medias reach,” Grey said. “The fact that you have college coaches sharing our stuff all the time, especially for our football kids being recruited. Knowing that that stuff goes so far out there, I take a big responsibility to make sure our brand is being shared the way we want it to be.”

And those are just a few of the roles that Grey assumes. Some of those most important ones that make up Grey are being a mother, and shaping the young individuals into successful adults.

“She always encourages us to be on time, to have all our stuff together, make sure our work is done, and aside from being an athlete and track, just to work hard always,” Gibbs said.

“She doesn’t care if we win, lose, she just wants to see us compete,” Byrne said.

Grey hopes that all her students and athletes take something from her as they move on past high school.

“I hope that they take not even the lessons they learn in the sport, but just hard work, relationships, my faith is a really big part of me and who I am, I hope they take a little bit of that also,” Grey said. “Especially in track though, that’s one sport you can take with you forever, you can run the rest of your life, I do hope they take that with them past high school.”