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NP’s Busch has eye on consistency; Hopes continuity, success go hand-in-hand
ROACHDALE — Roger Busch has learned a lot in a little over three months in his new position as North Putnam’s athletic director.
The most important thing, a belief also cultivated as a college athlete and coach, is that consistency needs to exist for an athletic department to be successful.
Busch, hired in April to replace Tim Garver, is the school’s eighth athletic director in the past 14 years.
He points to some of the school’s female 2017 graduates as prime examples of being subjected to constant coaching turnover, and a resulting lack of consistent success.
“A girl who graduated this spring and played volleyball, basketball and softball would have had 10 different head coaches in her high school career out of 12 seasons,” Busch noted. “That can’t happen if the programs want to be successful. And I don’t measure success in wins and losses, it’s just about having a positive experience in athletics.”
Busch has a good feel for the qualities a good athletic director needs to have, and is striving to use those qualities in his approach.
“You have to be very organized, and you have to communicate often and clearly,” he said. “The biggest challenge, and the characteristic, is getting everyone invested and on board.
“Things have changed a lot, and there aren’t as many teacher/coaches,” Busch added. “Getting people besides the coaches to help stick around and run events has been probably the biggest thing to tackle. Building school spirit and pride is also very important.”
The first task
Football and boys’ track coach Greg Barrett resigned in March to take a position at South Vermillion, and North Putnam principal Jason Chew said at the time he did not want to pursue a replacement until the new athletic director was on board.
Hiring a new football coach was Busch’s first task, and he thought the process went well.
“I was a fly on the wall on that search committee, but I had a decent amount of input,” he said. “Jason said he didn’t want to put this all on my shoulders in my first week. We did it the right way with a search committee and had a lot of good, young candidates.”
The eventual hire was 25-year-old Sam Carnes, an assistant coach at Avon.
Busch and the committee were not turned off by Carnes’ relative youth, and thinks he can help him in his first varsity position.
“That’s something where having coached at the high school and college levels that I hope I can help him to develop as a young coach,” Busch said. “He had a great mentor in Mark Bless at Avon, and the search committee did a great job to find him. He is very organized and understands the role of a football coach.
“I think we got a steal to get him.”
The challenges
Since Busch only arrived for the spring sports season during the 2016-17 school year, he has not yet had a full cycle through all of the sports.
“I would say the spring sports season is the toughest, with all of the rescheduling due to cancellations,” he said.
Busch credits principal Jason Chew and athletic secretary Jennifer Nelson with being “extremely helpful” during his indoctrination to the new position.
“They have been great,” he said. “I am very good friends with several athletic directors in the area, and they have all been very helpful.”
Busch is seeking to fill some coaching spots for the upcoming school year, and is particularly in need of a middle school and varsity swimming coach.
“That is a truly difficult spot to fill,” he said. “There are not a lot of available candidates.”
Busch said that another key position he wants to fill is that of concession stand manager, a person in charge of maintaining inventory.
Just an onlooker
Busch was the head cross country coach and assistant track and field coach at Wabash College for nine years, before accepting a position as head coach at Division I University of Hartford in the summer of 2015.
After a few months, Busch and his wife — former North Putnam and Illinois standout Cassie (Hunt) Busch — decided to move their young family back to Indiana.
Busch has not coached since, but admits this spring was “tough” just watching his school’s athletes compete instead of coaching them.
“That’s my background and my passion,” he said. “It’s been tough to sit back and watch.”
The big picture
Busch compares the budgetary responsibilities he had as a Division I head coach to those in his new position, so that transition has been pretty seamless.
“I’m in the process of doing a lot of homework in terms of expenditures and our revenue stream,” he said. “I get to be the ‘coach of coaches’ so to speak. My philosophy is that this chair it not to necessarily instruct or mandate rules, but to help the coaches and athletes to be successful.”
Busch graduated from North Putnam 25 years ago, and has followed its athletic teams since his departure.
He points to the consistent success of the football team as one which he hopes is a model for each of the school’s programs.
“Historically our football program has been pretty darn good,” Busch said. “Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of our other programs over time. I would like us to be competitive with all of our athletic programs.”
Busch said that communicating expectations “early and often, and clearly” is a key to making that happen.
“That comes with consistency from my position and in head coaches,” Busch said. “We have to be very diligent and find people who are passionate about their sports, and who understand the small school and small community dynamics.”
He said the ideal coaches are not ones who can “whip up” something to have one good season, but can promote extended success.
“We want our coaches to have a vision of what we need to do from the youth to varsity level,” he said. “To be successful at the varsity level, you have to be successful at the youth level in terms of participation, instruction and quality coaching. Getting each program on the same page from youth to varsity, and having the head coach to be in charge of that has been a struggle here.
Since 2002, former football coach Dave Pasch and Barrett (except for a one-year departure to coach collegiately) were the only head coaches in that program.
”That’s the model we want to use,” Busch said. “We want our coaches to know what help we can make available to them in order to accomplish our goals.”