The Santa Fe New Mexican James Barron column

Source: The Santa Fe New MexicanSept.迷你倉 06--Many coaches within Santa Fe Public Schools will say Kim Loomis was the problem.But she really is a symptom of a larger problem with the athletic program at Santa Fe Public Schools.The system is broken -- badly.The fix won't come with the next district athletic director who replaces Loomis. SFPS tried a one-AD system in the late 1990s, and it wasn't a good fit then. The problems back then mirror the problems plaguing the athletic department today.The lack of communication between coaches and its administrator.The inability to produce quick fixes to small problems, than watching those problems multiply like cockroaches hiding in the cracks of the foundation.A lack of an authoritative presence at either school for the students and coaches alike.One district AD is not the answer. It's time to bring back individual school ADs who can provide stability with those athletic programs.This is no shot at athletic managers Rose Lucero (at Capital) and Louann Padilla (Santa Fe High). They do an admirable job taking care of the minutia that comes with having athletic teams and taking some of the pressure off of the district AD, whether it was Loomis or Skip Hemperley, who held the job until 2011.Lucero and Padilla help round up volunteers for matches, games and tournaments, and turn the lights on and off at the gymnasiums. They they try to be the answer people when it comes to helping coaches with the administrative details that can bog them down and keep them from自存倉doing the thing they were hired to do -- coach.But Joe Moulton made sure a bus was ready for the Capital girls soccer team when it had to travel to a match. Joe Butler had a full slate of teams at Santa Fe High's Capital City Invitational, and didn't have to dip into the junior varsity ranks to fill out the bracket.Neither let coaching vacancies linger for months on end (ask the Capital volleyball team when it had a coach in place for the upcoming season the past two years. If you guessed May, that was too soon.)Oh, and when players were ineligible, they rarely made it to the field. To err is human, remember?It's not that a single AD is incapable of handling those duties. It's that he (or she) must coordinate with two high schools programs as well as football, volleyball and basketball teams at the four middle schools and two elementary schools with middle-school students.There's too many teams, too many programs and not enough time to get everything done. And if the AD is not properly motivated, then those little problems become larger ones when left to linger.The school district went to one AD because of budget constraints back in 2008, but saving about $70,000 by eliminating a position is not worth the hassle that comes with the savings.It's not worth watching an athletic program systematically fall apart.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) Visit The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) at .santafenewmexican.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉新蒲崗