For Tony Beardsley, athletic director of Sweetwater County School District No. 2, the philosophy is simple.
“Everything we do should be done ... to benefit those kids,” Beardsley said. “Anything we can do to get children involved in activities is going to benefit the community.”
More than a year after he took over as the district’s athletics director, Beardsley admits there is a lot he still wants to accomplish. However, he has brought a lot to the table already.
One of Beardsley’s more recent successes is helping make a voluntary insurance program available to any student in the district. A company, Special Markets Insurance Consultants, provides coverage while the district only gives out information about the program to students and their families and the coverage only deals with injuries occurring while involved in school-related activities, including athletics.
Beardsley said the insurance program started through his office as a means to provide student athletes with insurance coverage as he disagrees with students participating in athletics without insurance.
Beardsley has also worked at improving the athletics schedules in an attempt to save money and increase the amount of time athletes and coaches spend in the classroom. This led to a reworking of team schedules eliminating instances where teams would travel to other schools in the middle of the school week.
While he continues to work on issues impacting the district’s athletics programs, one of Beardsley’s biggest goals is to create a long-reaching strategic plan outlining needs and projects for a five to seven year period. Beardsley said the plan would encompass facility needs from the elementary schools to GRHS, as well as identify funding mechanisms to address those needs.
Beardsley also said the plan should fit in the district’s educational plan for its students and not focus solely on what the athletics programs need. That includes budgeting, such as for employees receiving extra duty pay as a result of involvement in district activities.
“It’s not all about sports,” he said about his idea for a strategic plan.
Another goal Beardsley has is to create an athletic council similar to the NCAA’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. Beardsley sees an educational opportunity in creating a council to help provide drug and alcohol education to younger students. The council would utilize representatives from the different teams to act as role models in dissuading children from trying drugs or alcohol. Beardsley also views the council as working with school administrators to build and strengthen involvement in the program.
Beardsley also seeks to create a grass-roots program to introduce sports to elementary school children. High school coaches and athletes would introduce the fundamentals of different sports to the children, with the option of competing in a short, two-week intramural season.
Students would compete against other schools in the district one night a week, after which the program would switch to a different sport. During his time in Bozeman, Mont., Beardsley introduced a similar program to the school district aimed at introducing wrestling to younger students and building up a struggling program.
During his final year in that district, the high school wrestling team grew to having 60 members, while 330 elementary students took up the sport.
“That’s how you build a program,” Beardsley said.
Beardsley sees a similar opportunity with the GRHS boys varsity basketball team.
The team has struggled during the past three years, and while the team wouldn’t improve immediately, Beardsley believes a similar program would help create and attract talent to the basketball team.
The intramural program wouldn’t be solely a district or GRHS project, as he sees opportunities for outside partnerships to help host different sports programs.
“We have to get creative to build our programs,” Beardsley said.
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