Sean Hennessy has a lot to keep an eye on, as the Miramonte athletic director supervises all 26 sports, all 128 coaches and all 800 athletes who represent the Matadors. And though few parents and casual fans know who he is, he can be found at a sporting event almost every day of the week, from frosh to varsity, from cheer to football. And if something goes wrong, he’s the first one coaches and players turn to.
You’ve seen him.
If you’re a Miramonte sports fan, you’ve seen Sean Hennessy. He’s always off to the side though, inconspicuous, watching carefully.
You might even know he’s the athletic director, and you might have a vague idea of what he does. Sort of like a general manager of a pro team, right? Well, except for the fact that Hennessy doesn’t supervise one team, he supervises 26. Well, 52, actually, because there are several levels in some sports.
And more than two-thirds of Miramonte students are, in a sense, in one of the classes he’s in charge of.
Oh, and those 52 programs are run by 129 coaches, and though he doesn’t directly hire or fire them, he has a lot of say in who does get to be in charge of Orinda’s high school athletes.
So with all this responsibility, he must be a highly paid administrator, right?
Guess again.
Hennessey gets his regular classroom teacher’s salary, and spends just 60% of his time, supposedly, on athletics. But realistically, Hennessy spends countless hours dealing with facilities, processing paperwork, talking with coaches, counseling players and, of course, going to game after game after meet after meet after sporting event after sporting event.
“I could pretty much be here 24/7,” he said. “If I think too hard about it, I wonder why I’m here.”
And like most teachers and coaches, Hennessy values his interactions with students, but as athletic director, he’s one step removed from those kinds of connections. “The job is isolating,” he said, but he works hard to stay in touch with students though his work with on-campus groups of athletes and by teaching two periods of P.E.
Like almost all ADs, Hennessy started off as a coach.
After playing baseball for now-closed Hogan High School in Vallejo, Napa Valley College and what is now Cal State East Bay, he moved into high school coaching at Las Lomas. After 12 years in Walnut Creek, he shifted to Miramonte nine years ago, and stepped in as athletic director after James Lathrop gave up the job.
And since then, it’s been a constant whirlwind.
“The most invisible, important part of my job is administrative,” he said. Every single Miramonte athlete must be eligible to play, which includes a medical clearance, academic qualification and a disciplinary check.
So that’s about 800 athletes who must be processed and monitored each year.
In addition, every coach must not only be interviewed and hired, but must also be up-to-date on a wide variety of training courses, from first aid to concussion protocols.
For nearly 130 coaches.
And that’s a lot of paperwork just to make sure every athlete and coach is cleared to be part of the program.
“If we played an ineligible player,” he said, “that would be my fault.”
And if a coach causes problems, that falls on Hennessy as well.
And speaking of coaches, there’s nothing sports fans – and parents – like to do more than complain about coaches. And they feel, often strongly, that wins and losses are by far the best measure of coaching success.
“Success on the field is way down on the list” when it comes to evaluating coaches, Hennessy said. “We take an overall picture of the program.”
The school conducts player surveys, and to the surprise of no one, “parents do have opinions” too.
But Lamorinda parents, despite their regional reputation as hovering helicopters, are not as big an issue as you might think.
“Parents aren’t stressors,” he said. “They’re advocating for their kid – and a lot of times, they just need to vent.”
Still, with 26 varsity teams, there will be turnover every year, and the process of hiring a new coach is a complex one.
“We look for someone to run a 12-month program,” he said. “But it doesn’t have to just be our coach. In volleyball, for example, most girls play club eight or nine months a year.” But there will still be open gyms, off-season activities and high school-oriented events that keep coaches busy most of the year.
“We don’t have a thousand people lined up on Ivy Drive wanting to be high school coaches,” he said. “Sometimes it’s super easy and sometimes it’s super difficult. Sometimes you take a chance on a young coach, even if it turns out Miramonte is just a stepping stone” to the next job.
But one thing a coach has to do is raise money.
The Acalanes school district does set a “budget” for each program, but there is no funding for the budget. Head coaches have to raise the money for their programs, including raising money for their own salaries.
In many sports, a foundation – a 501c3 corporation – run by parents helps raise money, and can in fact raise large amounts of money. It is not uncommon for high school football coaches in the East Bay to make $25,000 or more, according to multiple sources, and that money does not come from the school district.
“The foundations support the program,” said Hennessy, “and they can do a lot of good.”
Another support for any program is talented athletes, and there are only so many to go around. There’s a lot of talk about recruiting, but it actually starts on campus.
“We have a lot of off-campus coaches,” he said, “and we want them to come on campus and talk to kids.”
Of course, some Miramonte athletes don’t come from Orinda, most notably Sabrina Ionescu, who lived in the Las Lomas attendance area. “I don’t think she would be where she is today if she hadn’t come to Miramonte,” said Hennessy. “For Sabrina’s career, the transfer worked.”
But even though California high school sports are run by the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), each of the 10 sections has a lot of independence – and North Coast Section, which includes Miramonte, is notably resistant to allowing transfers to play immediately.
“I know the CIF would love for all 10 sections to have the same guidelines,” said Hennessy, but he understands when he deals with transfer requests, there will be NCS paperwork involved. “I wouldn’t roadblock a kid” who wanted to leave, he said, but NCS might.
NCS, though, will help out with postseason transportation, as trips to Fortuna or Del Norte are not cheap – and transportation is yet another of Hennessy’s responsibilities. “Buses are super expensive,” he said, “and buses are paid for by the program.”
So that’s one reason parents pay fees for their students to participate. Ferrying the track team to a meet in Dublin is not a cheap ride, and Hennessy must deal with arranging the buses and paying the bill.
Oh, and did arranging access to facilities come up yet? In the winter, multiple sports need to practice in the two gyms – one big and one small – and Hennessy has to schedule them both.
“I feel like an air traffic controller,” he said. “It’s constant adjusting.”
In the spring, that adjusting includes figuring out how to deal with rainouts, and how to decide when an event should be rained out, and when it should be re-scheduled.
Which means dealing with officials – who, by the way, have to be scheduled and paid. And yes, that’s just another pile of paperwork for a high school athletic director.
And then there are league meetings and section meetings and district meetings – in short, the list of tasks for a high school athletic director just goes on and on. So what counts as success for Hennessy?
Surprisingly, it’s not NCS titles, or big crowds at basketball games.
“It’s when a student-athlete feels comfortable enough to talk to me about an issue,” he said. “It’s watching some random JV team on Tuesday, seeing kids having success and a good time.”
And on that random Tuesday, at that random JV game, you’ll see Sean Hennessy.
Again.
