About Inductee

Officially, his name is Robert Weaver, but nearly everybody around town calls him Butch. His students and players at Lee High School call him Coach. His rivals call him hard to beat. The record book says he is one of the best high school coaches the city of Huntsville ever produced. Now in his 33rd year in the Huntsville school system and his sixth year as Lees athletic director, Weaver is also in the midst of his 27th season as the head baseball coach at Lee, his high school alma mater. Going into the 2013 season, his Lee baseball teams had won 451 games and appeared 19 times in the state playoffs. He has been honored as the citys baseball Coach of the Year six times between 1989 and 2012. More than 50 of his players have signed college baseball scholarships and nine have been drafted by the major leagues. One of these, pitcher Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves, was the National Leagues Rookie of the Year in 2011. Weaver played football, basketball and baseball at Lee in the early 1970s. He then attended Calhoun Community College before transferring to the University of Alabama, where he graduated in 1979. While still a student at Alabama, he began coaching baseball in the summers in the Babe Ruth League at Oak Park in Huntsville. He started his high school coaching career in 1980 at Bob Jones, and later coached at Butler, Johnson and Madison Academy. In 1987 he was named head baseball coach at Lee. He also served as the Generals head football coach from 1990-96, winning two city titles and advancing to the state playoffs four times. When asked to name the most influential person in his coaching career, Weaver said: Im going to surprise you. The answer is Ray Walker. Ray Walker, who was inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame in 2004, won 489 games in 25 years as Grissom Highs head baseball coach, capturing nine city titles and a state championship along the way. In middle school at Chapman, he was my baseball coach and B-team basketball coach, said Weaver. He was a young teacher and coach who made playing sports fun. He was hard but fair. He made us do what was right. I remember one day, I called him Ray and for that mistake, he made me run for what seemed like an hour. Coach Walker influenced me at a young age of 14, and from the eighth grade on, I had ambitions of coaching baseball. When I became head coach at Lee, I was suddenly coaching against the man who influenced me the most. In 1989, Walkers Tigers met Weavers Generals in the semifinals of the state tournament. They beat us in the third and deciding game to advance to the finals, Weaver said. All those years, it was strange coaching against the man who started my dreams in coaching. Even today, I have a hard time calling him Ray. Ill always remember him as Coach Walker. Weaver has been married to Patti Campbell Weaver for 32 years. They have two children, Matthew Weaver and Rachel (married to Matt Reynolds), and a grandson, Kipton Reynolds.