Three Rivers Superintendent Roger Rathburn confirmed to JoeInsider.com Monday afternoon that the search process for a new athletic director is winding down.
Longtime teacher and coach Gene Schroll, who was set to begin his first year overseeing Wildcats athletics, stepped down right before the start of the academic year due to health reasons. Schroll was a district employee for nearly 20 years before retiring last year. It’s unclear whether or not he’ll continue to coach track and field and cross country.
The job position was posted three weeks ago and the district will stop accepting résumés Friday.
“They’ll probably spend the next week looking at those résumés and doing interviews in early October,” Rathburn said. “They’re hoping to have somebody in place by November.”
Because of privacy laws, Rathburn is not allowed to comment on the specifics of Schroll’s health issues, which led to his hospitalization in mid-August.
Schroll could not be reached for comment.
“What we had done several years ago was our athletic director left during a financial storm when districts were trying to shore up their budgets,” Rathburn said. “I combined two positions. It was really difficult for that person to do both
“Because we’re somewhat out of the woods and are healthy financially, we wanted to split it back up again into two because it’s really hard to handle both jobs at one time. [Schroll] is a proven person, and we were familiar with Gene, and we were more than happy to have him come back. He was a fantastic teacher and a fantastic coach. So we were going to split it back up, because we could afford to, and shortly thereafter he experienced some health issues that were going to prevent him from fulfilling that. On his own he decided that he couldn’t do it. We’re just going through the process of finding a new AD. Fortunately we’ve had a ton of interest.”