Two area basketball coaches have made the jump to administrative positions to fill vacant athletic director jobs.
Chris Bessey has become the activities coordinator at Jay, while Rick Amero is the new athletic director at Monmouth Academy. Bessey replaces Mike Methvin, who has remained in the same role at the Jay Middle School. Amero succeeds Steve Ouellette, who took the job as principal at Madison.
Both have been two-sport coaches at their schools and were the head coaches of their respective girls’ basketball programs. Both hope to continue in that capacity if the administrative responsibilities allow for it.
Amero has been a long-time teacher and coach at Monmouth. Ouellette had been an assistant principal and athletic director, but the assistant principal position has been eliminated.
“I will still be teaching and (an) administrator,” said Amero, who has coached the girls’ basketball team for 14 years. “It should make for quite a busy day. At the moment, I am absolutely swamped and am learning as I go.”
One drawback to his new position is that it forces him to give up his role coaching in the fall.
“Unfortunately, I will have to give up coaching varsity boys’ and girls’ cross country this fall,” said Amero. “I am having a really tough time with that. I’ve been coaching cross country for the past 15 years. I’m still connected to the kids and was looking forward to coaching incoming freshmen. “
“I pretty much put in for them at the same time,” said Bessey. “I was going through the process with baseball. Obviously, they both go hand-in-hand. I didn’t know what my chances would be like. I thought I had a good chance at the baseball job at UMF. I went through the interview process (at Jay). They had three candidates, and they offered me the job.”
The activities coordinator position is a part-time job, as is Bessey’s job as baseball coach at UMF. Both should allow him to do both duties while also maintaining an outside job and his coaching job with the girls’ hoop team at Jay.
“People’s reaction is, ‘How are you going to be able to do both positions?'” said Bessey, who also works with his brothers in a family business. “The job is basically a four-part job. There’s the activities coordinator that oversees the athletic program, the budget and scheduling, which are things that can be done away from school. Then they have three different game contest manager positions which are stipend positions. Those are when you’re actually at the contests and making sure the crowd doesn’t get out of control and that officials have what they need. I’m planning on doing that in the fall and splitting that in the winter.”
Someone else will handle that role during the spring sports season. Bessey will remain as the coach of the girls’ basketball team. That position was in question after he took the UMF job, but he and school officials decided remaining in that role would be best for the program.
“By the time I got hired for the baseball job, that wasn’t fair to the girls and they’d have to rush somebody in there for the summer,” said Bessey, who will be in his eighth season with the Tigers this winter. “The only conflict with the baseball job at UMF is really during the summer.”
kmills@sunjournal.com
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