The two newest athletic directors in Garland County recently took time to talk to The Sentinel-Record about taking over their respective athletic departments and the challenges their new role entails for the newspaper's sports podcast, Garland County Locker Room.
New Lakeside athletic director Darin Landry spent over 20 years in the Lakeside School District before transitioning to the AD role.
After spending eight years as the principal at Lakeside High School, it was a tough decision for Landry to make the transition. However, after sitting back and thinking about the decision for a while, he realized that he wanted to get back into the world of athletics.
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"In my heart it burned to get back close to athletics again," Landry said. "I've been a part of athletics since I was a young kid -- played high school athletics then I was fortunate to go to college and play football in college, and so that's my life. That's something I kept burning to get back to that area."
A former Jessieville Lion basketball player, new Fountain Lake athletic director Danton Robertson has truly embraced his role as a Cobra. In his 10th year at the school, Robertson has only been an administrator for the past three years after he was hired following his student internship at the school.
Basketball was not Robertson's first foray into sports, but it was the only one he stuck with through the years. He started with T-ball but left the sport "once the kid started throwing the little hard ball at me." Football was also short-lived.
"I started playing basketball on sixth grade ... and fell in love with it, man," he said. "And hit a couple growth spurts, and so they stuck me under the basket. And I played basketball the rest of the way out under coach (Eddie) Lamb and had a good time."
In their first year in the role, both coaches face the challenge of bringing athletics back to normal after a year where the pandemic influenced sports across the board, but with the delta variant causing yet another surge of COVID-19 cases across the state makes the situation more complicated.
"That is going to be a really tough thing to deal with this year," Landry said. "As the AAA, they put their guidelines out that we're going to try to go on with a normal season as much as possible. I'm going to look and reevaluate probably every week with our athletic events and see what I can do to, Number One, make our kids safe and, Number Two, our community safe."
Having worked under Marc Davis some last year, Robertson was hoping COVID-19 would be an afterthought this year.
"I remember, I ended the year saying, 'You know, man, I hope we never have to do it again.' And here we are, you know, year two," he said with a chuckle. "I think the biggest difference from last year to this year is the guidance that we've received from the AAA is almost as though it is pre-COVID, you know, and it's kind of a district level decision on any precautions that we take.
"So, you know, we still have, still have quarantines. I was in charge of contact tracing for the high school last year, and there were a couple times where athletics was involved. And I had to, you know, had to watch footage of a practice to see if we had, you know, any close contacts out of there. And so, you know, this year moving forward, we're in the process of transitioning to digital ticketing to try to limit how long people are standing in line, you know, waiting to get into the game. This year from the AAA, there's no restrictions on seating capacity, or you know, anything like that. And so, now we're just kind of leaving it up to the participants, the people that want to come."
Landry is looking forward to his first football game as athletic director as the Rams travel to Pearcy to take on Lake Hamilton in a major rivalry game. He mentioned his experiences in rivalries he had been a part of in high school and when he played at Henderson State.
"All you can say about a rivalry is it doesn't matter what the preseason rankings are," he said. "It doesn't matter how good everyone says one team is over the other. When it's a rivalry, it's 50/50 on that field that night, and it's so awesome to see Hot Springs on what will be that Friday night -- all of the community coming out and actually getting involved and supporting each school."
When the rivalry was renewed between the two schools in 2018, Landry said it was standing room only at Chick Austin Stadium.
"There's nothing like a cross-town rivalry," Landry said. "When the community of both schools get behind their schools and they show up in force, that atmosphere is unbelievable, and I mean it's hard to explain."
The Cobras also have a rivalry game this week as the host the Hot Springs Trojans.
"It really has turned out to be more of a rivalry game than than was anticipated, and so I'm all about it, man," Robertson said. "I love, love a good rivalry game. As far as getting ready for it, thankfully, you know, we've been able to have these two home events on my end to kind of cut my teeth and see, you know, what we need to do different going into it because we're expecting, you know, a lot more fans to turnout with it being, you know, in the same city. So it's given me an opportunity to do that, given our school staff an opportunity to look at a smaller sample size and make some adjustments there."
While Landry is new to the athletic director position, he's not new to the Lakeside community. Moving forward, he wants to get as many students as possible participating in athletics for the Rams.
"I think sports teaches you the spirit of competition, it teaches you how to work as a team, it teaches you to perform under pressure," he said. "Everything that life has to offer as you get out of school and become a successful citizen, those athletic experiences train you to get to that spot."
There is much more to being an athletic director that what Robertson expected as he spent weeks taking notes while learning from former athletic director Marc Davis, but his thoughts on the new job came from something he overheard from another athletic director.
"He said, if the games can happen, then he's done his job. You know, some kid asked him, 'What do, you know, what do you do around here?' And he said, 'Were you able to go play your game tonight?' He said, 'Well, yeah.' He goes, 'OK. Well, then I did my job.'
"And so what all that entails is that long list that Marc gave me, you know, whenever he retired, and so all of that stuff that goes into it, just so we can, you know, have a ballgame at the end of the day."
Find the full podcast at https://www.hotsr.com/locker-room-ep2.