Boys Basketball
South Side’s Wallace Wins Heart of the Community Award
Today, South Side boys’ soccer coach Coliss Wallace was presented with the Heart of the Community Award. The presentation took place at South Side’s Jack Weicker Stadium, and the award was presented by Servpro Team Miller of Fort Wayne. His wife and children were at the presentation, and his soccer team was practicing leading up to the presentation.
“You know, it’s really a big [honor] … It’s humbling honestly,” Wallace said. “So there’s a lot of people that do a lot of good things in our community. And for me to receive it, I really feel like there’s so many deserving people out there.”
“I’ve never met anyone that’s had something negative [to say] about Coliss. It’s always, ‘Coach Wallace did this for me,’ or ‘Coach Wallace got me introduced to this person who helped me to do this,’” South Side athletic director Torrey Curry said. “And so, there’s this thread amongst each of those individual stories of people I don’t know that identically matches the things that I’ve witnessed him doing here with our programs and then what he’s doing with other teams that he coaches, whether it’s at the middle school level or just coaching his own kids’ teams and watching them grow up. And then those kids want to come play for him because that experience is already great and they know it’s going to continue to be a great experience.”
Essentially, the Heart of the Community Award is meant to recognize an individual who serves his community well.
“We do this [award] quarterly,” Nick Black, a sales and marketing representative for Servpro, said. “It’s a base-by-base system where we just want to present [the award] to someone that really does a lot for the community; whether it’s with the youth, whether it’s first-responding, or anything that involves just going above and beyond for the community. We just find that very important, and we want to recognize those people here in Fort Wayne.”
Wallace has coached in multiple capacities. He is in his third season as a head coach; both with the Archers’ boys’ soccer team, and with Memorial Park Middle School’s boys’ basketball team. In addition to that, Wallace has also coached boys’ basketball at South Side for eight of the last 10 years. He has served both as a head freshman coach and an assistant coach.
But in addition to coaching, Wallace has also works as a firefighter for the Fort Wayne Fire Department. He has been a firefighter for 16 years. His work as a firefighter has allowed him to also work as a school resource officer for Washington Elementary School.
“Honestly, [becoming a firefighter] was an opportunity to serve my community in a way that was unlike no other that I knew about,” Wallace said.
With his work as a coach, a firefighter, and a school resource officer, Wallace has a lot of different jobs he has to balance. Wallace’s experience as a former athlete helps him to balance all of the jobs he does.
“Being a former athlete, you gotta handle a lot of schedules, and honestly it’s pretty much the same thing, you know, just time management,” Wallace said.
He also recognizes that his student athletes also have a lot of work to balance.
“These kids have to worry about grades, they have to worry about practice schedules, they have to worry about families and jobs,” Wallace said. “I’m honestly doing the same thing, I’m just a little bit older.”
Under Wallace, Archers’ boys’ soccer has improved. They went from 6-8-1 two years ago, to 9-8-1 last year. That included a 2-1 win against DeKalb in the first round of sectionals.
The boys’ soccer season is fast approaching. The Archers are scheduled to open the season at Warsaw on Monday August 18th. Then they have their home opener on Saturday August 23rd, against their long-time rivals, the North Side Legends. Wallace and his athletes are very excited for the start of the boys’ soccer season.
“We’ve been itching to get back, and these boys, they bring a different energy, a different level of enthusiasm, and we just can’t wait to be together again.
