A coach in the game of life

Weidert honored for service to youth sports, community

By Ed Nadolski

Editor in Chief

Chris Weidert has coached youth sports – pick a sport, any sport – as a volunteer in the Burlington area for nearly 20 years.

But those who know him best say it isn’t his ability to teach the pick-and-roll, the hit-and-run, or the bump-and-run that sets him apart.

“Somehow, a coach connects with his boys or girls … in a very special way, and they can teach something that nobody else can if they take advantage of that opportunity. He does that,” Sister Margaret Pietsch, principal of St. Charles Catholic School, said of Weidert.

Those lessons, she said, go far beyond the field or the court and become part of the personalities of the team members and, by extension, part of the fabric of the Burlington community – changing it for the better.

For his dedication to youth sports and community service, Weidert was honored Monday with the Humanitarian Award, given annually by the Rotary Club of Burlington. The award presentation was held in conjunction with the Rotary Burlington Rescue Squad Annual Meeting at Veterans Terrace.

As part of the ceremony Weidert, accompanied by his wife, Peggy, and two of his three sons, was also accorded a Paul Harris Fellowship – a designation named for the founder of Rotary International that recognizes a $1,000 donation made to the Rotary Foundation in Weidert’s name. The money is used for humanitarian projects worldwide.

According to Chris Miller, a friend who has coached with and worked with Weidert on a variety of volunteer projects, Weidert’s résumé of service encompasses just about any endeavor he becomes involved with.

“There’s a million Burlington’s around the world, and what makes them so great or not so great is (whether) you’ve got a guy like Chris Weidert,” Miller said. “That’s what makes a community a great community. You’ve got to have people like that.”

Andy Tully, who has worked with Weidert on several projects at St. Charles church and school, agrees.

“He’s a good inspiration for a lot of us,” Tully said. “A lot of us have very stressful, time-consuming jobs and he runs his business like we all run ours. But it doesn’t stop when he goes home at 4:30 or 5 o’clock.  He’s got some meeting, some game or some practice to go to.”

Beyond St. Charles church and school, Weidert, an electrician who has his own contracting business, has been involved as a coach and volunteer with Burlington Little League, the Community Education Department and has been with the Burlington Spiders youth football program since it’s inception.

Fellow Spiders coach Todd Terry said Weidert has gracefully made the transition from head coach to managing equipment and fields behind the scenes even though his own sons have moved on to the high school level and beyond.

Terry said Weidert’s efforts as a coach are illustrated by the personalized letters he wrote to each of his players at the end of the season. Those letters didn’t necessarily focus on football, and instead often had to do with that player’s development as a person.

“The essence of this (humanitarian) award is getting people to reach within and dig within themselves to give what they can. And he certainly does that and more,” Terry said.

That approach is best exemplified by the fundraising car wash Weidert organized for the benefit of the Wisconsin Honor Flight program, which transports veterans to Washington D.C. to visit monuments in their honor.

Under Weidert’s guidance, the project – which started out as a small affair involving just his eighth-grade basketball team – mushroomed into a project for the entire eighth-grade class, eventually turning into a daylong affair that included a free lunch and earned prominent mention on a Milwaukee radio station.

The car wash raised nearly $5,000 – roughly enough to send 10 veterans to Washington. But Weidert didn’t stop there. He took members of the class to Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee to greet the veterans upon their return.

Those are the type of lessons that last a lifetime, said Keith Pollek, president of Fox River State Bank, who hosted the car wash in the bank’s parking lot and has coached basketball alongside Weidert.

“The bottom line is the man really does have a servant’s heart,” Pollek said of Weidert. “I’m excited about the next generation of young adults that he’s really positively influenced here in Burlington and what that means for the whole community.

“That’s an intangible you just can’t really put a measure on.”

To view a video tribute to Weidert, click here.