The second in a series by Cliff Lewis
Jon Mitchell’s role as athletic director not only demands that he oversee all sports programs at McCaskey, it requires thoughtful coordination of every school-sponsored athletic program within the School District of Lancaster—from elementary school to high school, and from students to coaches. Although this may seem a daunting jurisdiction, Mitchell is confident that a holistic approach is the surest route to substantial reform.
In observing McCaskey’s poor performance in recent years, Mitchell looks to the health of the District’s programs in their earliest manifestations: “Why do we tend to be competitive at some of our younger ages and then we are not as competitive at the high school?,” Mitchell rhetorically asked, “Is it because we don’t have enough continuity throughout our whole program where…we don’t have feeders at all, and they need to be created?”
Mitchell cited the District’s swimming program as an example of the need for such “feeders,” or pre-high school programs and clubs that prepare young athletes for the varsity level. With few nearby swimming clubs and no middle school swimming team, Mitchell said, “We have kids coming out for our [high school] swim team that do not know how to swim.”
Mitchell is now seeking ways to introduce swimming to the physical education curriculum, perhaps even down to the elementary school level. Also, Mitchell said, the District may partner with the Lancaster Aquatics Club to provide middle and high school students with additional practice opportunities, as well as experience with the swimming club’s professional trainers. According to Mitchell, such out-of-school training is foundational to most successful swimming programs:
“Swimming is an interesting beast. I’m starting to find that many of the kids that swim on their high school teams really only train with their high school teams a couples times a week. And the rest of the time they’re training with their club teams.”
Mitchell has also been encouraging varsity-level coaches to more frequently visit and engage with their corresponding pre-high school programs. For head football coach David Given, this meant hosting a special football camp for middle school students. Investing in these relationships is actually written into the job description of every varsity coach, serving to introduce young students to later opportunities and to advise the coaches of these youth programs, who are usually nonprofessional volunteers.
The varsity coaches are now being provided with learning opportunities, as well. According to Mitchell, this summer’s professional One On One soccer camp “provided instruction for both our kids and our coaches.” Mitchell said that the football coaching staff has already expressed interest in supplemental training of this kind, reflecting an attitude that Mitchell is encouraging among all coaches: “The biggest thing to me is the…willingness to listen to someone else… You cannot gain the knowledge if have the belief that you already have all the knowledge.”
In the midst of striving to comprehensively improve SD of L’s athletics, Mitchell draws satisfaction from students’ recognition of his unwavering commitment to all facets of the program: “The thing that I’m probably most proud of so far—and the kids understand this as well—is that every sport is important to me, and I’ll never be an athletic director who only looks at football and basketball.”
