welcome to the scoop my name is kevin o'donnell and joining me today is mr brian geier the athletic director at peters township high school he has been working as a high school athletic director at peters township for seven years and as an athletic director for thirteen years today we will be discussing the job of the athletic director at the high school and how he works organize all of the events for sports teams many of our students at peter's times of high school are involved in athletic sports and have schedules filled up with games and practices to prepare for competition against rival teams however with more than just one sport to handle the off like directors responsibility for coordinating all these events can be stressful but fulfilling mr guy thank you for joining me today on the show me i wanted to start talking about your job just the basics of what you do so what does an athletic director do coordinate all of our interscholastic athletics and grades seven through twelve middle school and high school here at peter's township to make sure in the overall programs run in a successful matter hiring quality people scheduling events and coordinating our facilities ok so it's not just limited to the high school it's also the middle school correct how do you plan out all of the sports activities at school middle school high school most of our activities consistently after being here for seven years  been repetitive in some regards with when we do budgeting when we have to do scheduling for all of our sports we also talk about you know our our staffing of those in those individual sports by coming up with  a schedule worth every at this time of year we're going to do this you know right now in january with the budgeting process for all of next school year we're just beginning that for our equipment supplies or uniforms our transportation so we're just trying to roll with it and get those things in place from the school year yeah i'm sure it takes a lot of time to prepare for a full year sports activity which we try to do so far like our staffing is normally  done six months to nine months out is our goal our budgeting is sometimes depending on the support season but you know our our spring sports are going to do budgeting for the two thousand and one nine hundred season at this time as well so it's it's planning ahead but also scheduling you know we'll do scheduling for all of next school year january february march and april waller settles down for next year so it's preparation a little bit how do you decide when these events will take place know there's pretty much no change there obviously are varsity sports would get the the prime time the quality times i guess the evening times for many more people to attend we tend to do some middle school and some some freshman level events right after school so how do you you have a lot of responsibilities on your plate female flight director for not only the high school as i just learned but also the middle school how are you able to those so he's taken that off my plate a little bit he's assisted with equipment so there's still a lot to go on and you know one of our focus is for this next coming for this rest of the school year in the next coming school years is to try do some leadership training  which we're going to have some offense going on in january to go through the rest of the year and that will allow me to get some more time by being able to delegate some of those responsibilities what do you like most about your job as the athletic  that they've learned over those past four years and you know the respect in the sportsmanship that they have that they may not have had coming in as a freshman but they can leave with those extra things that they're going to take with them that hopefully they'll use the rest or lives i know pain from participating in like myself for quite some time that it's not just about being involved for gaining the skill in this forthright so you want to be part of the team and teamwork and those  ideal things you know regardless of a carcass of a competition level for each individual student athlete on the team yet again something sports wise from them but hopefully again those are the things that are going to help you in life and when you have a family when you have are qualities there's no schedule in terms of stuff that comes up some days are obviously way more busier than others and then there's no consistency with valid i mean that's just the nature of it sometimes we have four games going on a given day and you know we have special projects that we're doing so it's just the flexibility and schedule but sometimes are stuff that we can't control the way to deal with in the sometimes are difficult but we make the most of it ye and that's different than the teachers here the high school who have to come to school every day for sentimental hours right probably nice being able to kind of yak for exactly what is going on in athletics up your sense that you're looking forward low earlier the leadership change that we're going to start embark on this month that will hopefully go throughout the rest of the school year that will go out to the rest of school year but continuing on i think we have some great ideas and hopefully we can get the ball rolling in this month in continuous out from for years in the future but i think we have some great ideas how do you prepare for these events like leadership training i actually do a lot of research went to other schools and they went to conferences that would assist with some ideas but you know we had to build a program based off of peers township not what somebody is doing in another state or up the road and i think that we're going to start to build a us but to get you to that education that learning as well to i work with sportsmanship and also leadership with our students but also to give our coaches the tools that they need to better their programs you know we don't want to progress become stagnant or stay the same we would always go and improve our program so it's to give our coaches the tools to do that as well so that's coming so that that's here that's good that's good to hear especially for students  students we usually get bored sometimes right is what new things are you working on that students might look forward to you know i think with students we look forward to hopefully some the training we're going to provide to them give them some some atolls to take something with you know to to be better people in their lives hopefully we get some buy in there but you know we're looking at those things and also doing you know really looking our conditioning programs and see where we can improve that as well to make our kids better faster stronger but also to assist everybody in every competition level what factors impact these decisions that you make about a competition level probably be just as just as tight as six sado but i think a lot of those factors are given to us obviously the budget dictates some of what we can spend money on on a given year but you know with the new building coming down the road to i think it's exciting stuff for our community at this time i know you just mentioned the new building and i don't know if we should really that's a lot to talk about right but will there be any changes when the new building spaces some spaces but it's really exciting for our department and we're excited to get to the point where we have to we can see what the changes are actually to be made for our programs you know we're just build spaces now but you know expectation that we're going to hold a higher standard with our with our extracurricular activities and i think that that's definitely the case we really we had sportsmanship a lot and that's a key aspect of stuff that we've done in the stalking about the representation that you want the high school to have the last question you answered was you want our school to be represented or how you're sponsible for it my next question for you is  some time some feedback with good stuff and bad stuff good stuff if our kids did kids or coaches performed admirably well above and beyond you know what people expect but also you know anytime we get some complaints we want to fix those immediately whether it be a kid or a kid or a coach to redirect to make it a more positive behavior in a positive experience for people that are going to tend i know you mentioned that you want to fix these problems immediately so how do you achieve the representation for fixing these problems when we see issues whether we're a spectator to game and if we see you know fans misbehave we try to tell the fans that in a positive manner that hey we're not going to do that if they're targeting a kid or another team or something like that we want to we want everybody to cheer for our team and not so much fear against the other team we've been successful that a lot but sometimes we three directed and make that experience change a behavior ok you're talking about mostly the fans from the high school or even from peters township i want to ask you what guidelines you have in place for the players in the coach to achieve our school's representation so prior to every athletic season i meet with our coaches individually sometimes world one and also a big  group we meet with every team i talk to the teams about my expectations of them as a student athlete at peter's township hundred presenting us and you know basically if things are not going to be  to our expectation level we would want to call those things out and change the behavior if that means removing somebody from a team we would do that so we have some zero tolerance on some things and i think that that's a key thing that our expectations are high and the kids in the coaches have to maintain that level of expectation throughout if they want to be a member of our fire teams similar to that our school has a policy of keeping  grades up if you want to continue playing for your sports team so how do you decide what students are able to continue playing based on academic we have a sharp program in the sharp program it's basically our weekly grade check for any student and inter athletic event in that given season with those you know we obviously want our kids to maintain three things in school academics attendance and positive behavior in school and you know the academic portion of it is is sometimes a struggle you know we want our kids to maintain high grades you know we're fortunate enough that with our teams there's there's a lot of high achieving academic students on our teams want to pull kids out of teams because of academics we want to get them to help ahead of time before they get into a failing position where they're actually filling a class obviously academics are far more important than school sports  absolutely for colleges and even just for the future right how do you provide aid to the students struggling academically and what are the steps that you take them back in i mean just touched on well with the sharp program it would have all the after school tutoring for any students that are struggling in a particular subject or subjects we have that ability to the student athlete we also have tutors we encourage kids to come in the athletic office and i'm sure going to socialize can you find way that could help and we do the best either to reach out to a teacher who's available in a certain period or to get a student athlete another student athlete or another student to be able to assist in tutor that that in vigil so well more about about how students on the team can also provide help to their teammates and we mentioned earlier in the first half of the show how being a part of the team also provides these teamwork skills right and helps students for closer to each other not just a sense of family really absolutely and i think that you know being a part of a team is this something that's really special and everybody on the team given the right attitude  feel strongly about their teammate either way you know they were going to help and i think that that's something that i've seen from our kids in peter's township that kids are going to help another another student athlete or another student i should say  get to a point where it helps them because there is some satisfaction of helping as well so i think everybody wins in that situation that's going to hear how do you coordinate with the coaches sports i typically talk to our coach odyssey the coaches twice a week three times a week but i'm on a daily basis communicating with our in school in seasons coaches you know what we can do as an athlete for me to help them with their program the needs that they would have any issues that they're having with a particular student athlete that maybe we can assist with but it's just trying to logistically get everything where a coach can run a practice run an event you know a you know this kid is going down the wrong path a grade wise and let's give him a pep talk you know so we've seen some success with that that's also going to hear you know how do you coordinate with the principals of the high school  you know miss palak and i have known each other for years prior to peter's township you know i think that our staff that we have right now piers township is excellent you know we do a lot of coordination with events and a lso you know major issues that we have you know they asked me for advice i asked them for advice and i think that there's a nice flow that we have among the administrators here i'm going to take a little shift  responsibility is to instill the positive values of sportsmanship basically displays if you have good sportsmanship you go you can have a lot of respect in the respect revolves around respecting your teammates your sect your down to help them up it's those little things that are thirteen important respect in the officials officials are not they don't have a great they don't have an easy job especially with everybody arguing about calls and stuff like that so we try to deal try to instill respect and that helps out the sportsmanship aspect of it a lot we found how do you what steps to take to handle problems among teams for example unacceptable misconduct  even on the field what we try to do ahead of time is we try to give our expectations for all student athletes to those students where you know students are to a higher standard we give them examples of what we accept it also stuff that we all accept you know hazing and bully you know raising a boy we have zero tolerance policy on that and those are things that  we're told about it they know what those things are and they know hopefully that that we will accept those things we want to deal with it and they will pretty much like the outcome but you know we tried to educate our students as best possible  we have some information when they register for sport but i think that that that constant contact either from my team meetings with each team or the coaches instilling a positive behavior and values among the  behaviors through literature the way they get them articles that we may send to those coaches but i think the big kicker right now is a coach education all of our coaches have to go through coach education  classes you know which are pretty detailed courses and to get the information for positive coaching but also first aid safety so we look at this is a huge plus for us and that's an endeavor that make sometimes tough decisions based on teams or students who may not be doing all that they're supposed to so what do you have or why do you have a zero tolerance policy for certain things i think there's certain there's certain things that we deem negative that we can't accept you know hazing and bullying or two of those things that we have very little tolerance for those type of negative behaviors  things that we deem is not what we expect from our student athletes well thank you very much for all of this information you've provided and i know that our students that pierce township we we do we we love being part of athletics so thank you for the information thank you unfortunately that's all the time we have today mr grier thank you again thank you for joining me and providing us with your knowledge thank you viewers for watching this episode of the