West Chicago Community High School’s new interim Assistant Athletic Director and Division Head for PE, Health, and Driver’s Ed were confirmed last night by the Board of Education by consensus vote.
With Dave Pater’s departure as Athletic Director earlier this year, Nick Parry stepped up to the position. In doing so, he left two openings: Assistant Athletic Director, and Division Head for PE. These roles were originally held by a single staff member, Parry, but have since been split into two roles for the remainder of the school year.
The Board of Education agreed by consensus last night to appoint Brittany Abidshi as the new Assistant Athletic Director, and Conor Zaputil as the new division head. They will remain in these positions until the end of the year, at which point the jobs will be posted, and Abdishi and Zaputil can decide if they want to apply and potentially interview for a more permanent placement.
“They wanted to kind of feel it out, and then make sure that they had the right candidates for the spot,” Zaputil said.
Both Abdishi and Zaputil were thankful and excited to be given the new opportunities.
Abdishi will step up as the new assistant athletic director, and will be assisting with the supervision of events like home games, as well as providing an extra helping hand in the athletics department. Adbishi has been a PE teacher at West Chicago Community High School for four years. Although she is fairly new to the school, Abdishi still has plans for the athletics here at WCCHS.
“I have ideas of new events or activities that we could be placing putting in place for athletics, for athletes,” Abdishi said.
Abdishi has wanted to be involved in education since the first grade, and has found West Chicago to be a welcoming school where she can grow; she has been curious about the administrative side of education since college, and this interim position gives her a chance to see another side of athletics at a school she loves.
“There’s a lot of passion that goes on here. And the fact that not only [does] the school [have] a super strong community feel, but the actual community here in West Chicago is very strong. And working in a place that has such a strong community is a really awesome feeling – a really awesome place to be every day,” Abdishi said.
Zaputil will run the day-to-day operations in the PE department, such as overseeing teacher evaluations and ordering materials that teachers will use in class. Not only was he a PE teacher at WCCHS as of yesterday, but he is a former student as well. Zaputil has a variety of plans for PE, including promoting the class to students and showing how physical activities and exercise can improve students’ daily lives.
“Being a former student here and everything, I was very humbled to be able to come back and start my teaching career here. Just because, you know, I kind of viewed it as me giving back to the community that brought me up,” Zaputil said.
He also mentioned that student involvement “is definitely something that we need to work on, just kind of promoting a little bit more, really just kind of talking about the benefits.”
In recent years, WEGO has brought back PE Leaders, a student leadership opportunity Zaputil remembers from his high school days, and has been working to change the perception that PE is just a required class.
“Something as little as thirty minutes of walking is going to benefit you in the long run, versus you sitting on the coach and just watching TV for two hours,” Zaputil said.
Both teachers expressed nervous excitement for their new positions.
“This is going to be a big change going from teacher to an administrative position where you’re responsible not just for the safety of students, but safety of teachers. And working with teachers and communicating with teachers a little bit in a different kind of avenue than I normally have in the past years that I’ve been here,” Zaputil said.
