Owensboro High School Athletic Director Todd Harper’s journey with the Red Devils has taken another step this year, as he was most recently named the 3rd Region Athletic Director of the Year.
“It is a great honor to be recognized by my fellow Athletic Directors,” Harper said. “There are several outstanding athletic administrators within our region and to be chosen by them is very humbling.”
Harper began teaching mathematics at OHS in 2000 and began coaching basketball the following year. He coached for 12 years and then got into athletic administration as the Associate Athletic Director under Dr Chris Gaddis.
This led to Harper taking on the role of Associate AD for five years and then became the Athletic Director in 2017. Now Harper presides as the High School Athletic Director as well as the Director of Athletics for Owensboro Public Schools.
Dealing with COVID-19 at the beginning of the year was something that Harper said definitely made the year interesting, but the fall sports started off strong.
“We made a nice run during football season, our volleyball team had a tremendous year with several big wins, we had several swimmers who made great improvements and performed well at the State level, our basketball teams were very competitive and had some success, we had a wrestler who competed at the State level and held his own,” Harper said.
Following in the fall sports footsteps, Harper is hopeful that COVID issues are behind them and that they continue to have success in the spring.
“Spring sports are in full swing now and we have made great improvements in all of our spring teams,” Harper said. “Our softball and baseball teams are both very young but are getting better every day. We have the best tennis player in the Region (defending champ Dylan Mather) and we have a good group of tennis student-athletes coming up. Both of our track teams should be in the mix to win the regional meet and our lacrosse teams keep getting better. We are still the only school in our region with lacrosse and our students seem to really enjoy it.”
Harper said their philosophy at Owensboro boils down to giving his staff the freedom to help their student-athletes thrive in the best way they see fit, while also doing the little things.
“What we try to do as an Athletic Department is give all of our coaches the best opportunity to actually ‘coach’ their team,” Harper said. “We do our best to take care of everything else so they can focus on what they need to in order to make each team reach its potential. There is a tremendous amount of behind the scene work as well as paperwork that goes on in order to have high school Athletics. Education-based athletics is what we provide for our student-athletes and we take that seriously.”
In noting the success that the Red Devils and its athletics have seen, Harper wanted to make it known that he couldn’t have received this honor without some help.
