Kevin Weaver
Founder of ELEVATE. Coach, teacher, and assistant athletic director. A leader whose strength has always been seeing people.
The skill that was there the whole time
For years, Kevin felt like a second-level assistant because he could not draw up a play or give technical feedback in the middle of a game. What he could do was see people. Read body language. Tell when something was off before anyone said a word. Build the kind of relationships that made people want to give more than they thought they had.
Those are not lesser skills. They are different skills — and they became the foundation of everything ELEVATE is. Two decades in athletics, from a student equipment manager running in a gym at 5:30 in the morning to an assistant athletic director building leadership programs, shaped a simple conviction: every person you lead is standing at a fork in the road. What you get to decide is whether they reach that fork having been seen, held to a standard, and given something honest to carry with them.
Two decades in the work
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Memphis
Student equipment manager, University of Memphis
Where accountability got personal — and where two mentors saw him clearly enough to hold him to a standard. Bachelor's and master's in sports management, and later a master's in teaching.
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The NFL
Football equipment intern, Miami Dolphins
Brought in for training camp, one of two interns selected to remain for the full season.
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Germantown, TN
Sports coordinator, teacher, and coach
Ten years managing youth and adult athletics for a city of 41,000 — including a 64-team youth basketball league and scheduling for 31 municipal fields — plus championship operations for NCAA Division I basketball. Then the classroom, and girls basketball: two state championship game appearances in Tennessee.
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Santa Rosa Beach, FL
Assistant athletic director, teacher, coach
Founded a Sports Management program at South Walton High School, now 60 students strong. Led boys soccer to back-to-back Final Fours — the first in school history — and coached beach volleyball to its first state playoff appearance.
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2025
Founded ELEVATE
A leadership development program built to close the gap between what coaches expect of player-leadership and how hard that gap is to close alone. Four state Final Four teams, two sports, two states — and a belief that leadership is a skill that gets built like any other.
"Leadership is not a personality trait. It is a skill. And skills get built the same way anything else gets built in athletics — through consistent training."KEVIN WEAVER