By George Bremer, Herald Bulletin Sports Writer
ANDERSON — No official announcement has been made by the Anderson Community Schools board, but Anderson athletic director Steve Schindler has been notified he will continue in that capacity next year.
“It’s an honor to continue being able to do what I’ve done for the last nine years,” he said. “It will be interesting trying to work through the merger of two schools. It’s going to be interesting, and it’s going to be fun.”
ACS announced Dec. 15 it would close one high school in the city to help make up a huge budget deficit. In ensuing weeks, it was announced the merged school would be called Anderson High School and retain the Indians nickname.
The decision has divided the community, and Schindler anticipates becoming a point man in the effort to bring the sides closer together.
“I would assume so,” he said. “From the athletics end of it. There’s a lot more to it than my part of it.”
Among the first orders of business will be forming next year’s schedules.
Anderson will retain its spot in the North Central Conference, but an effort is being made to include as many of Highland’s traditional opponents as possible in each sport.
“I’ll be getting with (Highland athletic director) Neal (Rector), and we’ll be trying to merge some of the schedules together,” Schindler said. “We’re going to try to pick up whenever we can some of the schools that are different from the ones Anderson has played. The first year is going to be tougher, but over the long haul that’s what we want to try to do.”
Coaching hires are another high priority, but much of that work will have to wait.
The school board will set the guidelines for the hiring process, and there are still several contractual issues that need to be worked out. The hires obviously will be one of the most important pieces of the transition, but it could be a while before any news is ready to be announced.
“We haven’t gotten any guidelines as far as a timeline or anything like that,” Schindler said.
The task before him is complicated, but Schindler has plenty of company.
He sat in on an NCC meeting Monday, and many of the eight league schools are dealing with similar financial challenges.
At least now he knows he’s the man in charge of finding ways to solve them.
“It’s nice (to have the position filled),” Schindler said. “But it would have been nice to have it even a little earlier.”
