Mrs. Crockett is retiring after sixteen years as Karen Wagner High School’s athletics secretary.  Mrs.Crockett is a kind, sweet, soft spoken and approachable person. On any given day, you can walk past her office and see her interacting with students and enjoying small moments. Sitting down with Mrs.Crockett is as comfortable as spending time with your parent or a grandparent. 

Marilyn Crockett was one of only a handful of teachers and coaches still here at Wagner who helped open the school in 2005. When she first came to work here at Wagner, the building itself wasn’t even completed; it was still under construction. “The hallway out here [indicating athletics] was still just a dirt floor,” she recalls.  Mrs. Crockett continued to be one of the mainstays here at the school for the next sixteen years. While many people tend to move around especially here in San Antonio, Mrs.Crockett found a home here with many reasons to stay, such as enjoying the constant change around her. “Student body has changed but overall they’ve been a bunch of great kid

Many people at the school may not even realize the athletics department has its own secretary, much less understand how important the position is. Being a secretary might be hard as soon as you start fresh but as for Mrs.Crockett, she’s been here for so long that she already knows the process and knows all of the ins and outs about the athletic department by heart. “I make sure they have the buses for games and basically the little things they need to go on about their day,” she says.

As much as they all agree this retirement is well-deserved, and they are happy Mrs. Crockett will be given time to spend with her grandchildren, coaches, teachers and administrators all over are sad to see her go. They speak about her loving nature, how important she is to the department, how thankful they are for having been under her charge…and her cakes. One thing that will surely be missed about Mrs. Crockett are the Texas sheet cakes she provides on game days to the coaching staff; she has been famous for them amongst those in the know for some time.

Although many would say Mrs. Crockett is “irreplaceable,” she was instrumental in selecting her successor and we are confident she was able to find the right person for the job. “I need someone to be there for my coaches like I was, someone that is a people’s person who is sweet, kind, considerate, respectful of their time, and overall just helpful in their own ways,” she describes. In that case Mrs.Crockett basically looked for someone just like herself, but she has been able to work with training her replacement and is open to seeing things done in new ways. “My biggest task now is making sure that I train my replacement well…and she may have a different way of doing it, but the important thing is getting to the same end result.”

When asked what Mrs. Crockett will miss the most about her work and Wagner High School, she paused and reflected before answering thoughtfully, “Oh absolutely the people, the interaction that I have on the daily basis, the watching the kids get ready for football games, watching the other sports get ready for their competitions, coming to a pep rally I love, that excitement that it brings but most of all, the adults interaction because that is, like I said–I come to work to be with my family.”