Menu
North Putnam board ends search for athletic director
BAINBRIDGE -- Roger H. Busch, a 1992 graduate of North Putnam High School and 1996 graduate of nearby Wabash College, was formally announced Thursday as the new athletic director for the North Putnam Community School Corporation.
Busch was officially approved via 6-0 vote Thursday during the specially-called public session, effectively ending a two-month search to replace former athletic director Tim Garver.
“I’m excited -- it’s interesting to come full circle back to the place where it all started,” Busch said of his North Putnam ties upon approval. “It’s not really something, when you leave a community, that you think you’ll ever see yourself coming back in a leadership role.
“Some of it’s coincidence, some of it is timing -- there’s a lot of inherent pride there,” Busch added. “I did a lot of research for this position ... and I’m optimistic that we can get better. How high the ceiling is, I don’t know. But we will get better and I’m excited to get to work.”
The move comes on the heels of two other decisions made recently by the board concerning leadership positions. As of Feb. 1, the board needed to fill the roles of superintendent, attorney and athletic director. With the first two filled in February and March, respectively (with Superintendent Dan Noel reapproved on Feb. 16 and Attorney Dan Taylor approved on March 15), the board needed only fill that of an athletic director.
Several members of the board said Thursday that the board has much confidence in Busch and looks forward to working with him. A committee, including President Amber Greene, Superintendent Noel, Ron Spencer, Dustin Osborn and North Putnam High School Principal Jason Chew, made the recommendation Thursday after several weeks of proceedings.
“It was a long process -- we had a lot of late evenings -- but we wanted to this right,” Spencer said. “I feel very confident, as one of the committee members, that we did do it right. There was a lot of deliberation and a lot of communication amongst the committee members and the faculty, and we look forward to (Busch) doing great things at North Putnam.”
Osborn’s comments echoed those of Spencer, displaying the board’s solidarity in the process.
“I’m excited that we have hired such an enthusiastic person for the job,” he said. “I’m anxious to see where North Putnam sports are going.”
President Greene added that it is nice to see another North Putnam graduate “come full circle” and build a career in education at North Putnam.
Superintendent Noel took the time to explain Busch’s contract. Though a copy of the agreement was not made readily available for the press, Noel stated that the new athletic director will have two contracts, the first of which will officially begin on April 3 and run for 58 days. The second and more substantiated contract will begin on June 1 and will run for two years, at which time his contract will either be extended, renegotiated or allowed to end.
Busch has spent nearly 11 years as a cross country and track coach for multiple universities, most recently as director of track and field and cross country at the University of Hartford in Hartford, Conn.
However, Busch spent from July 2006 to August 2015 as head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach at Wabash College, his alma mater.
While at Wabash he oversaw nine Academic All-American cross country teams (in addition to three All-Americans in the steeplechase and 5000-meter run and two cross country), two national champions, three national champion runners-up and two consecutive Great Lakes Regional Championships.
Before his time as a coach, Busch raised $3 million annually for the Crawfordsville university “via direct marketing, phone-a-thons and alumni cultivation.”
As Busch begins his stretch as athletic director of North Putnam, he looks forward to making a difference for the school that saw him come into his own.
“I have three older siblings who went to school here; my wife (Cassie Hunt) went to school here and was the high school’s only state champion in track and field,” Busch said. “It’s exciting to come back. Both my wife and I had great experiences growing up in the community.
“I know (the board) has struggled filling this position long-term,” Busch continued, “so it would be nice to establish some stability and see if we can gain some momentum. I’ll always have an open door (for the community) and if they want to talk to me, I’m open to it.”