001hello and welcome to Around the Clock I'm your host Yolanda Greaves today we are speaking with Kevin Anderson Kevin welcome to Around the Clock thank you yolana great to be here Kevin is the newest and I I won't say brand new because it's been about six months athletic direct director for the Ashland Public Schools Uh Kevin where are you from and what brought you to ashin um I'm a Massachusetts native I grew up in Dorchester spent some time in New Hampshire on the west coast and I found my way back here and I found my way to Ashlin kind of over the river and through the woods in a sense um I've spent 20 years in college athletics before transitioning to high school and uh after three years of Grafton I found Ashlin it's been
002a great experience thus far well um first of all maybe not everyone knows what does an athletic director do what what does that job entail yeah I think you know maybe when when we were in high school it was always the football coach and he he you know kind of did all the gym teacher stuff and um those kind of things it's changed tremendously probably over the last 30 years and even over the last five years with the um push for social media so I do a little bit of that okay um to engage the community engage our student athletes I do a lot of scheduling a lot of policy development but mostly I'm with the kids and that's you know kind of the thing that drives me is to connect with the kids and
003and kind of be a face for athletics at Ashlin how many sports do we have in our Ashen Public Schools so there's 56 when you count the different levels of teams um so you know like for instance boys basketball has freshman JV Varsity not all programs have that um but yeah so it's uh it's a plateful but it's exciting it the enjoyment that I get from watching the kids compete and get better over time and then see them smile and you know deal with you know victories and understand what happens and defeats that's the kind of thing that really really pushes me now do we have we have sports down at our Middle School do you manage those Sports as absolutely yeah um actually today we had the stepup day for the middle schoolers so
004they all came up to the high school to kind of you know walk around and see it and it's fun to see them like begin that process of coming to high school and um I explained to them all the sports we had and um all the things they can take part in at the high school so yeah we've got Sports um down at the middle school and it's it's fun to see them really get involved right away and carry that passion to the high school so you got hired and brought on in July MH jumped right into the fall season what was that like to jump into I would expect some of it was already in place what was that like for you those first couple of months it was um chalk full shall we
005say there was a lot going on and it it's uh it's a different job than I had previously and I love that cuz I'm learning more but a lot of it was set up in advance and you know scheduling and things like that by the previous athletic director who's been a great resource for me I've been able to connect with him and say hey what happens here what should I do here to kind of guide me and sometimes you need that because um without it you're going in blind um so it was uh it was busy it was exciting and you know getting to know the kids was probably the easiest part because um you know I I consider myself a connectable person so getting to know them that kind of gave me some Street
006Credit in a sense like this guy knows what he's doing so that that part was fun but you know games schedules referees buses the weather all those things played a part in the fall but it was it was awesome it really was so winter we had fall Sports we're currently in winter sports what sports are going on right now that you're seeing and helping the kids work through so we got um boys and girls basketball track for boys and girls um wrestling hockey boys and girls we're a co-op with a couple other schools for girls hockey um skiing swimming so we've got a lot going on in in the winter and it's fun too um you know I was watching the ski race last night on on the live stream and I was like wow
007these kids are so impressive there's no way you're catching me on skis so where do where do our teams ski where do they go they go to ski Ward um and uh we're in a co-op with Medfield so we get some kids from Medfield and we get some kids from Ash we create a team um that happens a lot when when there's interest from one town and interest from another they kind of meld together and and put a program together and where are where are our swim teams working now because I know we lost ke techpool yeah I think one of the smartest things that happened this winter was the decision by our swim coach to spend sometime at the pool in in Medfield and sometime at the CrossFit in in um South bro so
008rather than making our kids go all the way to U Medfield every night spend some of that time you know getting stronger at CrossFit and I think it's really paid off they've got their tvl championships this weekend and they're very excited yeah very good are we expecting anything big out of any of our team members I'm always expecting big things they've had a really good season and I think they like that kind of a switch it's it's hard when you're practicing you know 20 minutes away from from home and it's 8:30 9:00 and you're getting home at 9:30 10:00 still homework to you still got homework to do and you got to get up early and go to school the next day so that was a great decision by coach coach yeah so spring Sports
009coming up yeah very excited about the spring do we have for the spring um track and field outdoor baseball softball uh both lacrosse's tennis unified um track and field which is great um so there's a lot of opportunities for our student athletes our students to get involved uh how much parent involvement do you expect at the high school level expect or get two different things I guess let's let's start with expect or what would you expect you're always going to have parents involved because there's always um issues that come up I think but there's also the parents who are who are always at every game you don't hear from them they help out um and I think that's one of the great things about um Ashland you know we were we had a wrestling tournament
010at the beginning of the year um that we hosted and I went to the cafeteria and there must have been 10 11 wrestling parents behind the table who had spent time making food at their homes to bring to sell to raise money for the program yeah great and so you get that kind of involvement which is awesome yeah that's the that's really good I think one of the great things about our community is the volunteerism and that people step up to yeah there's a lot of help and I I've I've heard from so many people welcome and that that part really warms my heart what has been the hardest thing for you in the transition to the job here in Ashland I think you know learning how Ashland works it's it's no district is the
011same and my job at Grafton was very different than than this job like I said earlier and it's it's really taught me you know um ways to kind of be a better athletic director and um that's what I wanted when I came here I wanted to be challenged and Ashlin has done that so um the things that I needed to work on I'm working on and it's going to make me a better athletic director and it's going to help our kids more so that's been that's been great and I think for everyone if you're in a job where you can grow and learn you're going to be much more engaged so that's great yeah what has been your favorite thing or what has been the best experience since you've gotten here one thing there's so
012many there's I don't I I I don't know if there's one thing but I I just I love being with the kids like my doors open all the time kids are constantly popping in so what happens is that like during a lunch period I'll be at my desk and next thing you know there's 10 15 kids in my office so I'll grab my phone and I'll snap a picture of them all in random faces and just sitting around and now I've created like a wall of fame of of of the kids just in my office hanging out and there's one that's really cool is um I put a bowl a huge bowl of candy on it uh on my on my desk and and the kids the kids grabbed at it and it broke and
013the candy went all over the floor so I snapped that picture and that was the first picture that went up yeah uh you were mentioning social media so where could people follow you if you're on social media I think we're most active on Instagram it's ashin Athletics that's a place to be I every morning before I almost get out of bed I post the daily schedule I prepare it the night before and I post it so everybody knows what games are happening that day and then at night you're getting results and you're getting you know a lot of information about everything going on with Ashland Ashland Athletics on Instagram absolutely do you have a personal Instagram or is that the only one you use that's the well I do have a personal one but um
014the ashon Athletics is the one to go to that's the best one good good well before I let you go there's a question I asked all firsttime visitors to around the clock and I haven't had to do this for a while because we haven't had any first time for uh the question is is there something about you Kevin Anderson that not many people may know that you'd be willing to share with our viewers wow that's really that's a really good question what what do I want to divulge um what what detail do you want to share you know what I um I'm left-handed that's not great but it's only 11% of the world's population is left handed so I like that and I'm a barbecue fanatic how about that I'll drive and go wherever to
015try and try and find some barbecue so you've been to fireflies been love fireflies so great I was in uh Sturbridge a couple weeks ago at BT Smokehouse oh that's another yeah so I I I'll go wherever to find some barbecue okay yeah well Kevin welcome to Ashland uh I'm sure we'll chat more in the future as you're a little more settled in the job but thank you for coming on around the clock and we wish you the best of luck at as ashen's athletic director thanks for having me it was great great thanks for being here and we'll be back with more around the [Music] clock