In Part 1 of this series, I shared some of the stories our panel told about their first few years as athletic directors. Chaos. Trial by fire. The crash course in managing adults nobody warns you about. If that's all being an AD ever was, it would explain why so many people leave the profession within a few years.
But it doesn't stay that way for everyone. Something shifts for the ADs who make it past those early years. I wanted this second part of our conversation to dig into exactly what that shift looks like.
Building a culture people can actually name
Brian Petersen told us his turning point came around year five, when he got tired of feeling like he was constantly chasing his tail from one fire to the next. So he did something most of us never think to do: he sent out a community-wide poll. Over 2,000 people — student-athletes, alumni, coaches, community members — got a survey asking one simple question: who are we?
From those answers, Brian and his staff built a set of core values that every coach was then expected to apply to their own program. And once that was in place, something changed.
"It immediately helped, because I could answer questions," Brian said.
Questions like: why can't I put up a life-size senior poster on the fence before the first game? Because the answer wasn't arbitrary anymore — it was rooted in something the whole community had helped define.
"That's something our community, our alumni, and our people believe strongly," he explained.
Once that common language existed, fires stopped starting in the first place, because everyone already knew who they were.
Culture is also just showing up for each other
Kolleen Nesheim took a similar approach, but through something simpler: monthly meetings with her coaching staff. At first, she ran them, handling agenda, talking points, the usual. But after a couple of months, the coaches started leading the meetings themselves.
"They realize that they're all in the same boat," Kolleen said. "They have the same parent complaints, the late nights, all the off-season expectations on top of their day-to-day lives."
By the end of her second year, she noticed coaches showing up to each other's events — not just their own sport. "That was a really good cultural movement for me," she told us.
Finding your people
Jodi Loeblein-Lecker's path looked different. She'd actually attended the high school where she later became AD, which meant leading teachers and coaches who used to be her own teachers and counselors. Her advice centered less on a single tactic and more on a mindset: find your mentors, both inside your building and outside of it.
"That's when you know you're leading — when they come to you looking for your advice."
"Sometimes as an AD you feel like you're on an island," she said. "But we're a very helpful group — so always reach out to them."
Once Jodi built those relationships, she noticed something: people started coming to her with their problems instead of avoiding her. "That's when you know you're leading," she said, "when they come to you looking for your advice."
Why longevity actually matters
Here's the thread that ran through all of it: once an AD sticks around long enough to build real relationships, install real systems, and define a real culture, something bigger starts to happen.
Keith Badger described it well: every year you're somewhere, you earn a little more trust. As that trust builds, you can accomplish more. "Longevity done right establishes a consistent culture on which success can be built," he said.
Kevin Simmerman, who spent 29 years in athletic administration across multiple districts, put it simply: "Seek to understand before you seek to change anything."
Build the trust first. The rest follows.
"Not too many people care about the score in the math room. But they sure do care about what happens on Friday night."
And that trust doesn't just make your job easier — it ripples outward. Coaches stick around longer. Parents know what to expect. Kids get to be part of something stable and consistent.
As Kevin told us, "Not too many people care about the score in the math room. But they sure do care about what happens on Friday night."
Athletic departments, he said, are the front porch of the school. When you build a culture that lasts, that front porch says something good about the whole house behind it.
That's the foundation. In Part 3, our panel gets specific: the actual advice they'd give their first- or second-year selves, if they could go back and say it now.
