Sun staff
The Bethel-Tate Board of Education approved the hiring of a new high school athletic director at its meeting on Jan. 27. Matt Koenig, a 12-year veteran of Kings High School, replaces Joe Sumpter who vacated the post earlier this school year.
Koenig left Kings in 2011 to take a job as the Director of Sales and Marketing at Apex Awards, a trophy and awards company located on the West Side of Cincinnati, as well as taking on the role of Commissioner of the Greater Catholic League Coed Division. However, the itch to get back into an administrative role drew him to Bethel-Tate.
“I saw the job had opened and I had been wanting to get back into athletics a little bit more,” Koenig said. “I inquired about (the opening) and Mr. (Keith) Hickman, the principal, wrote me back and said that the Board had taken it from a full-time job to a part-time job.”
Hickman and Koenig discussed the opportunity and Koenig accepted the school’s offer. A part of the agreement was that Koenig was able to continue in his other two posts.
“I worked out of my house on a laptop, so I’ve moved from my home office out to (Bethel),” Koenig said. “I spend most of my days here doing a little bit of GCL, a little bit of Apex Awards and a lot of Bethel-Tate stuff at the moment.”
Given the mid-year athletic department shake-up, Koenig said he has been in a “hurry-up offense” to get things set for spring sports and the beginning of next school year.
Koenig began his athletic duties on Tuesday, Jan. 20. One of the first orders of business for him was to hold a coaches meeting on his first day on site.
“The sky is the limit here at Bethel-Tate,” he said. “I think there is a lot of potential. We’ve got some really good coaches and we’ve got good kids.”
Koenig said he will rely heavily on the experience he gained at Kings.
“The Kings job really opened my eyes in terms of seeing the potential of a high school,” he said. “Everything that we did for nine years helps me in this position because I’ve got in my head what could be done and what things we should try to implement.”
Koenig said that the differences in school and community makeup will not allow for a carbon copy, but a blueprint of success has been laid out.
Among things Koenig wants to try to implement throughout the halls of Bethel-Tate and extending into the community include resurrecting an athletic council and working more with the booster club to create other opportunities.
“(Booster clubs) are the financial backbone of any athletic department,” Koenig said. “I’ve been meeting with them to see what events they have going on. Financially, there are a lot of concerns in terms of having money for our teams and our programs.
“We have to look at our facilities. There are so many facilities in the city of Cincinnati that have turf fields and we don’t have a turf field. That’s not the no. 1 goal, but we need to look at them and say, ‘how can we start generating some finances?’
“The business relationships need to be looked at in terms of how we can tap into to getting some support from local businesses to try and help not only school district athletic budget, but also the booster club budget.”
Koenig said he is excited for the future of the Bethel-Tate athletics. He believes that, similar to his work at Kings, he can continue to build upon past successes and relationships to make the best athletic experience for the students at Bethel-Tate.
For more information on Koenig, log on to his personal page on the school website at betheltate.org/athleticsdirector.aspx.