STATESVILLE — When Mark Weycker tilts his head back and shows a toothy grin, he bears a striking resemblance to that psychiatrist guy on Cheers named Frazier Crane.

Then you hear the West Iredell football coach’s story and think that perhaps his calling would have been lying people down on the couch and listening. After all, he has been all over the country and met all types of quirky personalities.

Weycker grew up in the western suburbs of Los Angeles, moved to Wisconsin, coached in the Black Hills of South Dakota and finally — somehow — ended up putting down roots in small, rural North Carolina.

“I went from a junior high in Los Angeles with 2,500 kids to northern Wisconsin and a K-through-8th grade elementary school with 100 kids and snow up to here,” Weycker laughed. “My wife is from Union County and when she wanted to move back to be with her mother, I didn’t mind.”

But Weycker had never lived in the south. And that was a rude awakening.

One day, he stopped for breakfast on his way down.

“They threw this breakfast platter out,” he remembers. “I asked the waitress, ‘Why are you serving rice in the morning?’ She said, ‘Honey, that isn’t rice. That’s grits.’ ”

Not only did Weycker see grits on his plate for the first time, it was probably the first time a waitress had called him “Honey.” It wasn’t bad.

So in 1987, he brought his wife and young daughter here and became a Tar Heel for life.

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South Dakota, Wisconsin and L.A. seem like the end of the world nowadays. It’s sorta like West Iredell is now in its new conference, the Central Carolina 2A.

Realignment took West Iredell away from its natural — and closer — rivalries in the Southern District 7. Bunker Hill is 12 minutes from the campus. Bandys is 20 minutes away. Neither are on the schedule anymore.

But schools that seem worlds away — like East Davidson, Ledford and West Stokes — are.

“We felt being on the edge put a real hardship on us travel-wise,” he said. “Not so much in football because you travel just once a week. But other teams playing in the middle of the week aren’t getting home until 11:30-12 o’clock.”

It didn’t help that travel has become very expensive over the last few years.

Weycker used to have fundraisers for his team, which meant kids got stuff like sweat suits and the facilities were kept up. Not anymore. Those fundraisers now fit the bill for travel.

A total of $2,400 was raised just to charter buses to football games outside Iredell County.

“It has made it nice for the players — and for the coaches,” Weycker said. “We don’t have to worry about long drives home. But the money we used to have for facility upgrades is now spent just to keep the program going because of travel.”

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Weycker says West Iredell is your basic, rural 2A high school. Plenty of country and plenty of cows, thanks to Stamey Farms, a famous name in the selling of cattle worldwide. The kids don’t have much in common with city schools and therefore, Warrior officials expected to be in a conference with Wilkes, Caldwell and Surry county schools, with programs they had formed a nonconference relationship with.

But Ashe County consolidated its three small schools to form a 3A school and for some reason, was allowed to play down in 2A. That left Weycker’s Warriors out in the cold and they were moved into the CCC.

Weycker admits West is not bringing an overwhelming history into the new league.

“This school has been here for 28 years and it has won just 10 men’s championships,” he pointed out.

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That’s not to say West hasn’t produced its share of individual stars. Jerome Henderson was an NFL player. Shon Coleman is currently playing basketball at Georgia for Jim Harrick. Robert Gaines was one of the top players in hoops at Western Carolina. And you can’t forget flashy wide receiver D.J. Summers, who went on to star with quarterback Kevin Brown at Catawba. He is back this year as one of Weycker’s assistants.

But team-wise, the Warriors have not flourished consistently. Weycker was 8-3 in 1999 but didn’t make the playoffs. He was 8-2 in 1993. The Warriors are 2-5 going into tonight’s game at North Rowan.

“We always give great effort but we sometimes fall short on the athleticism needed to be competitive,” he said.

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What teams are the most competitive? The volleyball team, for instance, entered this week’s league tournament with a 22-4 record.

But boys sports have been hurting. Brian Cantrell came over from East Davidson last year but couldn’t get his Princeton-like passing game going, finishing an un-Cantrell-like 3-18.

“We shot about 20 percent from the layup line,” Cantrell sighed. “But we’ve improved. This summer in camp we won more games than all of last year: four. So we’ll be better.”

Weycker thinks his team will be better too, especially when the growth from around Lake Norman starts heading up the river toward West Iredell. A study projects that in a decade, Iredell County may need another high school in the area.

“The elementary schools are busting at the seams,” Weycker said.

West’s population is 930 but in the mid 90’s, it fell to 680.

“We just didn’t have high school-aged kids here,” Weycker said, “and we really struggled.”

West is also the only county school with just one middle school feeding it. And middle school football? Forget about it. The system allows them to play only about five games per season and hires just two coaches to oversee two teams.

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But Weycker makes the best of it.

“There’s not a better place to teach in the state of North Carolina,” he says. “We have parents who really care about the kids.

“And they have always supported us. The community does a great job of raising money. You look at our facilities and we’re in the upper echelon in 2A of what we can offer our kids.”

The odds are that West will be 2-6 after tonight but Weycker will survive. He loves where he lives, loves what he does and has accepted the fact that he’s now firmly planted in the south.

Where we eat grits for breakfast, not rice.

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Contact Ronnie Gallagher at 704-797-4256 or rgallagher@salisburypost.com .