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- [00:02]
A
Dive into the dynamic world of high school sports. Whether you're a seasoned athletic director, a newcomer to the field, or simply curious to learn more about this exciting profession, this podcast is your go to resource for inspiration, education and a deeper understanding of the game changing decisions that shape the world of high school athletics. Welcome back to AD360. I'm Greg Vandermayth and today we have a special episode for our listeners. This podcast is mostly educational and we like to think that we provide some good thought leadership around the athletic director profession. But today we're going to do things a little bit differently. On this episode, my co host Scott Rosenberg and I are going to share some of our craziest moments from the days when we were athletic directors and walk through what happened, how we handled it, you know, whatever potential fallout there may have been, and hopefully provide a little bit of entertainment for the listeners today. Scott, what do you think is going to have you what's going to be some of your top crazy stories? What got some good ones lined up for us?
- [01:00]
B
Remember when I was on one of these episodes and I was talking about when I was teaching history and I always thought that like essays were more difficult if you limited the amount of words a kid could use than it was just like, hey, you say whatever you want. Like, I kind of feel the same way here, right? My head was exploding trying to narrow down the number of crazy moments that I had as an athletic director and of course kind of like the appropriate ones for a podcast at the same time. So yeah, lots of ideas, lots of crazy days. Let's just jump right in. Maybe we'll give like three, four if we have time, maybe like five each.
- [01:35]
A
And yeah, I think that would be great. You know, just talk about. I, I think that it was you and I had a little bit of fun talking offline before we jumped on this one. I'm in the same boat as you. It's like you've got a ton of them, but you also got to remember what are ones that are, you know, audience appropriate, if you will at times. Because I'm sure ads throughout the country come across some very, let's call them, unique scenarios that are not exactly the best dinner table conversation topics to be bringing up. So I'm sure we'll have to make sure that we are selective in some of the stories that we tell. But with that said, why don't we jump right into it? I'm going to ask you right off the bat, what's one of your craziest moments that you had as an AD.
- [02:20]
B
For some reason, Greg, my first year, I mean, you would think the first year is going to be like your hardest year as an ad, like, you know, as a new ad. And like there's a lot of transition. But I swear there were so many moments in my first year that were unique to my entire 17 year career. Like they didn't happen again and they were crazy. And one of them, I can tell you, was the athletic director that I replaced was the boys basketball coach. And this district had agreed to allow him to stay on as the basketball coach even though he was retiring from the athletic director job. Really well known, great coach. And some things happen during that fall season where fingers were pointed a little bit at him. Almost made me think as a first year ad, like, did they really want him to stay or were they just sort of like allowing him to do it and they didn't really want him to. And bottom line, in the end he wound up quitting like three days before the season. You know, I remember I was going to a conference meeting, leaving in my office to go to a meeting, probably one of my like first or second conference meetings. And he walked in and threw the letter on my desk and said, I'm out. And like I, I was on my way out of the building. I didn't have time to really think about it, but I'm just like, you can't do this kind of thing. No, you can't do this. I remember that thought going through my head and then obviously like all the fallout from that. And I'll give you a couple like interesting pieces which I didn't necessarily, I didn't have enough experience or I guess enough clout to really like, let's say, stand up for maybe what I thought was right and wrong. And I can literally remember just like the sequence of events from him quitting to him saying that he wanted to be able to like tell the team himself. I'm like, yeah, you should, you should tell the team yourself. To people above me in the district first saying, no, you can't have a meeting with your team. To one of my bosses finally agreeing to allow like a meeting where this guy could come in and kind of say goodbye. And understanding that he had been there for, I don't know, 20 something years as the coach and had relationships with the kids from the time they were like first grade through. Right. Because he was involved with the rec program. And I can remember literally being told that he can have a meeting, but that myself, the principal and the superintendent were going to show up at the meeting. And I remember saying, I don't agree with that, but all right, if that's like, what we're going to do, but I'm going to let them know. And then being told, you can't let them know. So literally the guy's having, like his exit meeting with the team. And then three administrators walk into the meeting, like two minutes into the meeting, and sit down in the back of the room. And I can finally, I can remember him like, saying to each kid, kind of like, here's what you need to do to get better, Greg, you know, and if you want to be a great player, you need to work on, like, your vertical right or whatever the it was. And literally one of my bosses standing up after him saying that to like one or two kids and saying, coach, it sounds like you're talking as if you were still the coach of this team. You're not the coach of this team anymore. This meeting is over. And I remember a couple kids basically f bombing that administrator for interrupting the coach and doing that in the middle of the meeting. And I was just sitting there, like, shaking my head. What the hell do you do as a brand new administrator when your bosses are telling you to approach it this way? You think it's completely wrong. And like, I worried about whether I was fit for that job and it was the right job for me if that's like, what I was going to need to do moving forward in this role. So that was, that was a little bit nuts. And then obviously from there, just trying to figure out who the hell is going to coach the team. And, you know, like, I was a wrestler. I could tell you that. I mean, I didn't, I didn't step in to coach that team. I did coach hockey. I was an assistant hockey coach once because I had a fire coach like three days before the season. And that's a whole nother story of the smell of the hockey bench. The amount of cursing on a hockey bench. And that kind of stuff was a little bit shocking to me. But that basketball one sticks out. Wild.
- [07:09]
A
That, that is wild just in terms of timing, you know, and then you're in a rock and hard place scenario, right, because, like, you got. The brass is telling you to do one thing and you're, you're not in agreement with it, but you're. You're new into the role, so it's like you can't really push back much against. Is pretty funny, though, that I can just imagine, like, I'm picturing some of the student Athletes I had and putting them in that room with the basketball coach, and there's a handful of them that come to mind as the ones that would have stood up and turned around and said the F bomb. So I'm just. I'm kind of painting a mental picture of what that would look like if I was in that scenario.
- [07:47]
B
100%. Man. It was interesting. Day one. Obviously, I learned a lot from. But when I wouldn't want to repeat or hope that didn't happen to others for sure.
- [07:55]
A
Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine.
- [07:58]
B
All right, so I'll. I'll.
- [08:00]
A
I'll. I'll go with one of mine where it was early into. Into the role as well. And this one was the. Soccer was a winter sport for us out there in Southern California, right? So I had gotten a fall under my belt. And, you know, you get through, like, the first little, you know, hiccups of the fall, you, like. You hit a groove to where it's like, okay, I know I'm still learning this job. I certainly don't know everything. Like, there were many days when I stepped into the office, like, why are you looking at me to be in charge? I'm still learning stuff. You know what I mean? So there was moments of definitely feeling like imposter syndrome at times, but by the time we got to winter, I felt like I was in a pretty good groove. And I'm like, okay, I got this stuff. And we. We get to winter playoffs, and our boys soccer team, they'd had some decent years, but never, like, really great in my tenure there. They were always competitive, but they start making a pretty decent run in the playoffs. So I'm pretty excited for it. And we get now to the semifinals of the CIF Southern Section, and we're playing a team that, quite frankly, on paper, there was no way we were going to be in this match. I did not think that we were going to be able to play well against this team. Talking with our coach, who I had developed a great relationship with, he's like, you know, I certainly going into it optimistically, but here's how we match up. This is just a good program. Well, the boys play just well above what they should be, you know, and they're. They're playing extremely well. I'm there. And our school president is there as well. He attended almost everything he's, to this day still. I still consider him a good friend. He's just a great gentleman. But he had forgotten more about the roles of athletic directors than probably most ads have in their career. Right so, like, anytime that I was in charge of an event and he was there, there was still. Even when I was more tenured, there was still, like, that presence of, like, oh, we can't have anything go wrong. Well, things went wrong first. We're. We're doing warmups, and, like, in the beginning, the things that went wrong, it's going to. It seemed like bigger issues at the time than they really were. You know, our national anthem singer showing up late. Like, oh, great, the microphone, it's not connecting. So I'm like, oh, God, this just looks bad on my part. So then we get the game started. Like, okay, water under the bridge. We've got everything going. We should be good now. Well, at one point during the. The first half, the scoreboard starts kind of shorting out, and I'm like, oh, great. I don't know how to fix scoreboards. Like, what's going on here? I'm trying my best. So then we end up, you know, kind of having to. To make do with what we've got, because the scoreboard's now out, so we've got the flip cards, and we're keeping time at the. At the table and everything like that. So not a good look, right? So as we're going through, you know, our president's like, hey, you know, stuff happens, Stuff happens. It's all right. We get near the end of the game. It's a tie game, and there is a critical offside penalty that negates a key play for the opposition. We take that momentum, and we go down, and we score what would eventually become the winning goal. The other team is livid, and they start rushing the refs after the game. So, like, I'm sitting there, like, in a panic mode. First thing I'm doing is pulling out my phone to call our director of security. Get security here. We got to get the officials, escort them out of here. And it gets to a point where luckily nothing came to, you know, fists being thrown or anything like that. But it was an extremely stressful situation that by the end of that game, I remember walking out to my truck, and I sat in there for, like, a moment and just, like, decompressed. And I'm like, what could I have done differently? And I remember, like, I'm sitting in my truck, and our president was parked not too far away, and he comes up and just knocks on my window. And I'm like, sir. And he goes, that was a hell of a match. Pretty wild ending. Good job. And just kind of, like, walked off because, like, I was Sitting there thinking to myself, I'm like, oh, my God. National anthem singer doesn't show up on time, microphone's not working, scoreboard goes out. Then we got fans that are rushing the refs to where we have security have to actually escort them. Security ended up securing people in the. The venue itself so they couldn't leave while they were escorting the refs out, because that's how concerned they were. And I sat there and I thought to myself, I'm like, this is insane, and there is no playbook to tell you kind of how to deal with that type of scenario. But that was one of the wilder ones. And I think that it was beneficial that it happened earlier in my career, because then I kind of got a sense of like, okay, we need to have security get ready. This is a contentious game. I want you to escort these officials out right when the. The time expires. And having a better game plan going into it. But it definitely was one of those where I was like, breathing out of a paper bag throughout the game of, like, what more can go wrong right now? And it was a trial by fire, if you will.
- [12:55]
B
Yeah, there's no playbook, as you said, for that kind of stuff. You know what's interesting, and I think, I hope that this. This podcast can help maybe go over some of these kind of, like, scenarios. And they're all unique, but I think in the end, it's. It's about preparation. We've talked about that so much on this. For example, I'm sure the first time somebody was there to sing the national anthem, I don't know that I had a backup national anthem to just plug in. Right. And play quickly, or I didn't have it on my phone to just play. Right. So making sure you do. I don't know that early on I had like, that go to person to maybe fix the scoreboard right away. Right. Was there somebody that I could call, you know, listen mid game? Really? No way around it. But what if it was two hours before the game game, you notice it went out? Like, do you have that go to person that you can give a shout to that maybe come over and. And help you out the lights, like that kind of stuff. So it's just the preparation and it's the relationships that could help you sometimes a little bit. It's not helping you with fans charging. Well, I guess security. But, like, you ever have a time when you didn't necessarily want to save the refs, by the way, when that kind of happened, you're like, when the call goes against you and it's your fans. And I'm kind of like, do I let this happen or do I not? Right.
- [14:18]
A
Exactly.
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B
Mindset. But, yeah, I mean, that's a rough day. That's a rough day at the office, man. Makes you wonder if you want to come back tomorrow.
- [14:26]
A
Luckily, I did. There was. It was certainly a bumpy one and one for. For the. For the memoirs, if you will. Yeah, give me. Give me another one where it was just a unique scenario for you.
- [14:38]
B
Yeah. So in New Jersey at the time, school budgets, and we may have talked about that during budgeting, school budgets were up for a vote. So, like, the local community would vote on a budget. And the community that I was in there, it had like, the budget had failed a bunch of years in a row. It wasn't a great scene. And it was always very, like, nervous time when you presented the budget and like the day of the vote, just because if you. If it failed, you would inevitably wind up having cuts and that kind of stuff. So I remember that the budget failed in town one year. And the process was like, the town council would take your budget and have to, like, review it, and they would have to basically say, well, here's what you need to get rid of. Like, we're going to cut it by this much. And instead of $25 million, you're getting. Let's just throw a number, right? You're getting 24 million. So there's. We're going to cut a million dollars out of your budget, and here's our recommendations for where you should cut the money kind of thing. And literally, like, the day that the town council was going to be deciding on how much was cut or announcing how much was cut, an article came out in the newspaper about how ecstatic I was that the school agreed to finally, like, budget and pay for a new golf team. So imagine, like, they're trying to figure out all the cuts that are taking place and how much to cut from the budget. And then there's like, the athletic director of the school celebrating them adding an athletic program to the budget when you know that money's going to get cut and it's just a matter of how much. And like, it was very coincidental. Like, I was interviewed well before that kind of thing, but the article came out the morning of that decision being made and it pissed off a crap ton of people in town. And, like, in the town council, why would he be talking about, like, us supporting this new program when we're having to cut five others kind of Thing. And I just remember, I remember it was like the time when you can actually have like when there was newspapers, hard copy. And I just remember my superintendent walking into my office and throwing the newspaper on my desk and going, how are you going to feel about being responsible for an extra million or two getting cutting out of our budget tonight? Oh, man. And by the way, I'm signing you up for some media relations courses or something like that, so. I know, yeah, it's probably hard to understand, but it was like, you want to talk about like, you know, your, your throat going into your stomach kind of thing. It was a terrible, it was the worst time it could have been. I was probably dumb for even talking about it, even though it was not related, but it was a stupid decision and like getting called out on that was not good.
- [17:59]
A
Yeah, it's definitely not fun, especially when you're dealing with finances. Right. Like that's, that's, that's one where it's, it's a tough scenario regardless. But it's also, I mean, like, there's many times like these, these stories that we'll be sharing that we always talk about kids having teachable moments. They're teachable moments for administrators too. You know, you don't know it until you've experienced it and you don't know how you're going to react to it until you've actually had to listen live through it.
- [18:24]
B
Yeah. So in the end, make sure your timing is on and say, makes sense for anybody listening. For sure. Yeah.
- [18:33]
A
The, the art of reading the room, right?
- [18:36]
B
Yes, sir. Yeah.
- [18:39]
A
You know, I'll kind of piggyback on that one. This is my second year on the job and it's a finance related one. And the way that we kind of were structured there, like, I was very fortunate in the sense that we had multiple athletic directors. Right. And we were all tasked with various elements of the, the program. And prior to this time, I had nothing to do with, with the finances. And it gets restructured to where I'm going to now be overseeing, you know, budgets of all of our sport programs and making sure that we're, you know, doing well. And the first thing that I'm given is, you know, all of the account information where our sport programs are sitting. And I look and I'm not going to throw anybody under the bus, but I'll just say sport. We'll call it Sport X. Sport X was insanely in the red. Like, I don't even know how things were getting paid and who was signing off. I mean, I know who was signing off on it, but they were no longer there to really take the blame, if you will. So then right out the gate, like, I see all of this, I'm like, okay, well, this is the first set of reports I'm getting, and I've got to go and meet with our administrative board and sit down and say, hey, got a little bit of a scenario and having to talk through with them how far into the Reddit was, and then also having some very uncomfortable conversations with the coach because it was to the point where it's like, okay, how are we going to recoup this? Are we going to retain this coach? And just a lot of back and forth of kind of how to handle the situation because the coach was well regarded by, by his peers and his, you know, his, his team and everything like that. So we wanted to find a way in which we could make this work. And we did come up with a scenario where he was essentially, you know, hosting camps and finding ways to earn their money back. But it was, it was a unique scenario and one in which that was a teachable moment, if you will, because then from there on out, I was basically the, the no fun ad because, hey, I need this PO sign. Okay, let's check your budget. Let's see what you got going on here. Because I, I then, moving forward, certainly had kind of the, the guardrails in place of how did this get so out of hand? And there was, it wasn't just one individual fall through the cracks. Like, there were multiples. And it becomes kind of like a deeper dive where I'm like, you're the canary in the coal mine. And you're like, okay, well, some people are going to be kind of ticked off at you now because they're going to have to answer for how we got to this place to begin with. And it was definitely a unique scenario and one in which there was uncomfortable to be in for for probably a couple of months until things were really righted. And you, you wanted to make sure that you still had buy in from that coach, you know, because you didn't want to have to get it any uglier than it already was. On the tail end of it, though, you know, things worked out, learned from it, grew from it definitely became a, that was probably for me, a blessing in disguise that I got that right in the front, because then I was just stringent with everything to make sure, like, okay, this didn't happen under me, but it could happen under you if you're not paying close enough Attention. So it was one of those where it was definitely an uncomfortable scenario for quite some time. But luckily things worked out in the end. Budget ended up being back where it needed to be and moving forward. Sport X was pretty good about their. Their finances, if you will.
- [22:30]
B
It's. It's like you're glad that money wasn't missing as opposed to, like, overspent. I guess maybe there's that silver lining because, you know, you read about that stuff all the time. Yeah, like booster club executives. Right. Like embezzling money or this or that and dealing with that as opposed to just overspending at times. I don't know. But yeah, there's. There's a tough one for you. That's a tough day also.
- [22:58]
A
Absolutely. What do you got next for us?
- [23:04]
B
So many. Right. President of my Morris County Athletic Directors association. And we get served with papers, a lawsuit or at least notice that we are being sued or could be sued, I guess, for an incident that took place in a county soccer game where a girl got injured by an elbow from another kid and the parents of the kid who was injured was going to be suing everybody. And I was, I was president of the association and it was, you know, it was a county game where it took place. So, like, you know, I was named individually kind of type thing as president of the association. Lots and lots of other people, right. Were named, like, in that lawsuit. And I can just remember just trying to think like, well, I knew we had insurance, But I didn't 100% know who it covered, if I was covered individually. I was worried about, like, the organization. It seemed like, I would say frivolous at the time, but, you know, when you're getting something official, you don't feel really good about that. And I can just remember, like, trying to scramble to just try and make sure, like, that we recovered, that our ducks were in order. And it was really stressful, I would say, for a little bit. And again, it was just. It was a good learning experience and making sure that, like, you have the coverage that you need, that you're prepared to answer to, you know, any kind of situation out there. And I can just remember basically fighting back pretty hard when I probably just should have shut up kind of thing and let, like, the lawyers be more involved in it and just talking about how frivolous it was at the time and being on the defensive, I guess you would say, instead of just shutting up and letting professionals do their job. But that was like, eye opening, I would say for me, as president of an organization like, you know, sometimes you get leadership roles in organizations, but you don't necessarily think like, about the larger overarching, like, responsibilities that come with that. I remember president of my fraternity house. Like when we would have parties at the fraternity house, they would always say, like the president of attorney house, if something goes wrong is the one that's going to get arrested. The president of fraternity, right. Like, he wasn't even at the party, but something bad, like it happened. So the same idea, like, you know, you in leadership roles, it's smart to make sure that you understand what your responsibilities are and then make sure that you're covered for whatever could potentially happen in the end.
- [26:02]
A
You know, I guess it's. It's always a good thought to have as you're having conversations with, with those that you're managing. Thought that should always go through your mind. Can we get sued for this?
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B
It's terrible, but it's true, right?
- [26:14]
A
Yeah, it really is.
- [26:16]
B
All right, number three for you.
- [26:18]
A
All right, so I got this one's a little bit of a. Of a funnier one. And I apologize in advance, it's going to be a little bit of a name drop, if you will, just because the individuals that were involved make it even funnier. So every year we would, We. It still goes on, I believe, host like a giant basketball. Let's just call it a showcase, right? Like, they're not league games and you get teams from all over the area and some come even from out of state. And it was just, it was an experience, right, because you get these great basketball programs playing each other. Both our boys and girls teams would participate in it. It was always a. From an ad perspective, it was a nightmare to host because basically it was two days, right? So it'd be two days long. And you'd go in, you'd work a normal Friday, and then you would have to come back Saturday and be there all day. So it was just a long, long day, but you got to see some great basketball. And one year there was a team playing in it that had multiple star players for it. And these star players had NBA bloodlines, if you will. And we were selling our tickets and there was two different types of. There's three different types of ticket types, and there was a very expensive floor seat option. And then there was, you know, your, your ga, which is a little bit less. And then you had like kind of your, your nosebleeds, if you will, for the, for the high school arena, if you will. And I get a call from our security personnel that's that's working the. The front office. And he goes, I need you to come up here right now because we've got. Derek Fisher's here because he wants to get tickets to see his nephew play. So his nephew's on the team. I'm like, no way. Derek Fisher's here. So, like, I, you know, run up to the. To the front office, to. To the ticket booth, and I'm hearing them talk through to the. The personnel that are doing the tickets there, and they're kind of. They're. They're doing a good job. They're like, trying to upsell them. Like, hey, you know, we got some floor seats that are available, and they're X amount of dollars and they weren't cheap. And he goes, oh, yeah, no, I'll take three of those. So he takes three of them. Some time goes by, security guy calls me back up, he goes, kenyon Martin's here. I'm like, what? No way. So I go, kenyon Martin's son was on the team, and he's getting talked up, hey, you know Derek Fisher sitting floor on the floor seats. You want to get some of those? So he buys a handful of them, right? So now there's a good amount of money that's been invested into these floor seats for this tournament deal. Well, the coup de GR was I was like, I'm all, call me when this kid's dad shows up, because I gotta see him. And that kid's dad was Scotty Pippen. So Scotty Pippen comes up and security guy lets me know, and he goes. So I'm up there and, like, I mean, you can't even see Scotty because he's so tall. Like, you don't even see him out of the ticket window. And they're talking to him like, yeah, you know, you got Derek Fiser and Kenyon Martin are sitting courtside right now. He's like, oh, okay, well, how much are those? And they tell him. He goes, I ain't paying that. Give me a general admission one. So they sell him the GA ones. And then the security director looks at me, he goes, hey, where did he end up sitting? I go, he's just going, ga. And he goes, greg, I can't let him sit in the GA section. People are going to be hounding him. At least when I have him, like, courtside, he's with the other guys. I can kind of keep them a little bit separated from everybody else. It's still a high school gym. It's not that big, right? But the Biggest joke of it all was Scottie Pippen's walking in. Our director of security comes up to me, goes, I know you had bought some seats, but you know, for your benefit we'd like you to come and sit next to Derek Fisher and Kenyon Martin. We have some extra seats there. He paid general admission prices. The other ones paid like the top dollar for them. And they're like, oh yeah, you popped four too. And he goes, I didn't pay for that, man. I just got GA's. And they were like what? Like they were okay with it. They didn't make a big stink about it. But I thought it was pretty hilarious that you get like these NBA pedigree guys coming in and the biggest name of them all arguably is like, no man put me up in the GA's. But it was, it was pretty funny because there was a lot of fanfare. You know, people were excited to see him. That team was unbelievable. I mean they were just unreal. It wasn't even fair. It was grown men playing toddlers essentially. But that was a, that was a pretty fun one from my time there. Well, Scott, this has been a lot of fun kind of going back and forth with some of our, you know, antics of on the job stuff. I'm sure that many of you listening have stories that blow those out of the water. And hopefully one of these days when we're at a various conference or something like that and you see Scott or myself, we can have the, the after hours conversations of some of the stories that maybe are not airwave friendly if you will. But Scott really had a good time with this today. I really appreciate you joining me on this one.
- [31:02]
B
Yeah, me too. I'm from New Jersey. Most of these would qualify as after hours conversations so I enjoyed it though. Appreciate listening to your stories, man.
- [31:13]
A
Well folks, I think that's going to do it for us for this episode of AD360. It's definitely a different style for us, so we hope you enjoyed kind of just hearing some of the different scenarios that Scott and I had to go through when we were on the other side of the desk, if you will. If you enjoyed this style of podcast, feel free to let us know by liking the YouTube video or the podcast where ever you get your podcast from. We definitely like knowing what type of content you enjoy listening to and tuning in for. So make sure that you can follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast from. And from A.D. 360, I'm Greg Vandermade.
- [31:49]
B
Scott Rosenberg until next time, folks.
- [31:52]
A
Thank you.