Camron Wayland
To celebrate the achievements and extraordinary resilience of the historic class of 2021, the Rappahannock News will feature one Rappahannock County High School senior each week until graduation on May 28. Students have been nominated by their teachers and mentors to be featured in the Senior Spotlight series.
The rst time Camron Wayland sat in the sports announcers’ chair, he was in seventh grade. It was January of 2015, Wayland remembers, and it was a girls’ junior varsity (JV) basketball team.
“I said — my famous line — ‘Mr. Burley, it’s up to you. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it.’ And he said, ‘Come on, I’ll give you my script.’ And sure enough, he said, ‘You want to do it next game?’ and I said, ‘If you want me to do it, I’ll do it,’ and the rest is history,” Wayland said.
Now a senior at Rappahannock County High School, Wayland has been accepted to James Madison University in Harrisonburg and plans to study sport and recreation management with a “possible minor in sport communications — maybe a history or coaching minor if I can double up minors.”
And he’s already got a job when he gets to Harrisonburg — Brandon Burley, the athletic director who started Wayland down the sports announcing path all those years ago, now works at Harrisonburg High School and has o ered Wayland a position in the athletic department. “I said, ‘Sure, you know me, I’ll take the opportunity,’” Wayland said.
“I might take over as the PA announcer for some of their sports, not too sure on that … but I’m really looking forward to what’s ahead. Networking has really helped me make decisions for my future and I’m grateful.”
Wayland noted if it hadn’t been for his family, he might never have found his passion. When he was in fourth or h grade, he said, he went to his twin sister Carrington’s volleyball game. “She played all the sports,” he said. “And my grandma — she sat in the stands, she said, ‘You need to go get the volleyballs and pick them up and go put them in the carts for them.’ And I said, ‘Grandma, I don’t know if I can go on the court or not.’
“And she said, ‘Just go do it and see if they tell you to get o or not!’ And so I started picking them up. And a er that, I don’t know how, but I became the manager of the JV volleyball team. I started in sixth grade and I’ve been doing that to this day,” he said.
Wayland now coordinates setup for all the home games and announces during football games, basketball games and volleyball games. He also writes the sports column for the MadRapp Recorder. “I’ve made so many memories,” Wayland said. “Just being able to witness the strength of the [athletics] program building up and the mentality of the players and the coaches has been a sight to see. I’m glad I decided to stick with it.” Asked what advice he has for high schoolers who come up behind him, Wayland said, “Find something you’re interested in, whether it takes two days, two weeks, two months or two years. If you have to take a gap year before college, take a gap year.”
A er college, Wayland said he has his sights set on a ve-year goal: to become a high school athletic director himself.
“I’d like to be an athletic director here [at RCHS] but if that opportunity is not open, then it’s not open. Maybe somewhere down the road, [I might] be a sportscaster — it’s on the table,” he said.