Greenwood, Loyal boards table hiring co-op football head coach

Approve cross country coach

The Greenwood and Loyal school boards have pushed the pause button on choosing a coach for the 2024 co-op varsity football program, opting to see how the upcoming season plays out first. The school boards met separately last Wednesday and voted on the matter.

A four-person panel interviewed the four candidates for head coach in mid-April and made a recommendation to hire Chris Lindner, who has been the head coach for Loyal for more than 20 years. Chris Lindner is also the Loyal district administrator. The interview panel consisted of Loyal Middle/High School Principal Doug Dieckman (soon to become K-12 principal), Loyal Athletic Director Scott Schiller, Greenwood District Administrator Joe Green and Greenwood Dean of Students/ Athletic Director Jenni Mayenschein.

Dieckman said the intention behind interviewing so early had been to plan ahead so the transition to a complete co-op went as smooth as possible.

“With the joint committee discussion, [the idea] was to be ahead of it and get out there about a year in advance. So logistically with co-ops, it gives that person time to work with the schools with the season coming because there’s probably some things that would take place during the season that they’d be working together, you know, language, terminology, things like that to prep them so it’s not just a big shock when we merge in 2024,” said Dieckman.

However, school board members had some serious reservations about hiring the 2024 coach this soon. Part of those reservations were because a a few parents had spoken at the April board meeting saying they did not want Chris Lindner to continue as the head coach and they wanted someone new. At the May board meeting, the board approved Chris Lindner as the head coach for the 2023 season, with the understanding that he would follow a professional development plan.

“We haven’t even gotten to this year yet, and it was kind of an improvement plan for this year to see how this year went, so why would we at this time, before football even started, already do it for the following year?” asked board member Dave Clintsman. “Secondly, I guess, when you [Chris Lindner] took the job that you’re in, it was under the condition that you were not going to head football coach anymore. Everybody said that we couldn’t find anybody; whether we looked real hard is debatable. We have found other people, so I think it’s a no.”

Clintsman added that he felt Lindner was knowledgeable, but it was just too much to put on one person’s plate and still be able to do a good job in both positions.

Board member Derek Weyer asked Dieckman what caused the panel to come to its recommendation. Dieckman said all the candidates interviewed “really well,” but a couple of things that stood out were Chris Lindner had “an established relationship” with both communities and was the only candidate who had experience as a head coach at the high school level.

“We’re 51 days away from the opening of the 2023 season… I don’t know that you have time to start orchestrating a ’24 season when the ’23 season is so close,” said Weyer.

“I don’t know that this decision needs to be made tonight. I personally feel like let’s wait and see what the ’23 season brings. If the team supports and rallies around him, I have no problem making that recommendation in October, but I don’t know that it needs to be made tonight.”

In the interest of full disclosure, Weyer also revealed that he was one of the candidates and didn’t receive any correspondence about the interview until the week of June 21.

Dieckman clarified that the reason there was such a delay between the interviews and the board making a decision was because, in the meantime, the board had discussion around changing the process of hiring fall coaches, so they needed to get that ironed out first, and then they had to hire the 2023 coaches before hiring the 2024 coach.

“To the point about allowing enough time to work with the Greenwood people, there still would be plenty of time for someone to be trained into that job, if it ended up being somebody else. I agree that we probably don’t have to make this decision right now,” said board member Holly Lindner.

Weyer asked Chris Lindner if he would speak to the issue, which he agreed to do.

“Tabling it to the end of the season, it would not be a drastic — it would not put anything behind, I don’t think,” said Chris Lindner. “Obviously I got a plan for the fall and we’ll be working through that for the ’23 season.”

“I think it allows us to see that plan through before we look at the ’24 season,” said Weyer.

Holly Lindner made a motion to table the hiring of the 2024 head football coach until after the 2023 season. The motion was seconded by Clintsman and approved unanimously, with Weyer abstaining.

The discussion took a similar tack at the Greenwood meeting, in which that board also decided to table the hiring of Chris Lindner after members of the board expressed reservations about the recommendation.

“I’m not sure if this is the right choice,” said board president Jamie Gardner. “He had problems before getting to practices because of his job (as Loyal superintendent). I get that, but when we set this up and we get into this co-op, can he make it to Greenwood for practices? The superintendent job he has is the most important job of his day. Can he fulfill that? Can he make it to Greenwood if he can’t even make it to Loyal?… Nothing against him, when he was hired on as principal, no one stepped up and he continued on, I get that. The same happened when he became superintendent. But in my eyes, having someone be superintendent and coach is a conflict. If someone has concerns about coaching, who do they talk to? The AD (athletic director)? What is he going to do to the guy who is above him? No one wants to put a tag on their back so they don’t end up saying something when they should be saying something.”

“We want this to work,” added board member Eliza Ruzic. “I think personally his number one primary concern should be as superintendent, not football. I think a lot of people coming into this collaboration want to start fresh. I think fresh is the better way to go.”

Cross country coach Both school boards approved Hannah Olson as the head coach for the cross country co-op. Again, there was a four-person panel — this time consisting of Dieckman, Chris Lindner, Green and Mayenschein — that interviewed the candidates. This time there were only two candidates. The panel made the recommendation to hire Olson.

Clintsman asked what caused Olson to stand out as the recommended candidate.

“The interview was one tipping factor. Both have experience. One candidate has a lot of experience, many years. But I think some of the things that, whether it’s going on or we’ve heard about kind of played into that factor. But that coach has done a lot for the program, and we took that into consideration,” said Chris Lindner.

Clintsman said the reason he asked was because other sports had had problems with coaches and it hadn’t resulted in a change in coach, so he was wondering why they were looking to change the coach in this instance.

“One of the things we had talked about at the last meeting was they had never interviewed since the co-op, and that this was going to be the time to do it,” said Weyer.

“So with the change in administration over there, they wanted more consistency with when there is a co-op, the current coaches are interviewed and we go from there. And that has been done,” said Chris Lindner.

The goal will be to hire a head coach, assistant coach and two middle school coaches for cross country. Dieckman said the purpose of that was to have equal representation from both schools.