 Hello, my name is Michael Morris, I'm the superintendent of the Amherst Pellum Regional School District, and welcome to the latest episode of Window Into Arps. I'm really excited about this episode today. Something that's near and dear to my heart is inter-school athletics. I'm thrilled to have Rich Farrow, who is the athletic director for our district, and Zora Dahlman, who is a junior at Amherst Regional High School and multi-sport athlete. To talk a little bit about how the athletic program works in the high school and how it influences the lives of our students all across the grade 7-12 continuum. So thank you for being here. For sure. So Rich, you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got connected to athletics? Yeah, for sure. So I've been a lifelong athlete. I went to Amherst Regional High School, played three sports the whole time I was there, and I continued my athletic career in college. I played lacrosse at Union College and it's connected in New York. And when I graduated from there, came back and immediately got involved with coaching the high school hockey team here in Amherst as an assistant. And then after a couple years, realized that teaching was something I'd be interested in and got involved with teaching and was lucky enough to get a position at the middle school where I coached the high school hockey team for six or seven seasons and then got involved in administration. And so from there, did a little student, as a dean of students at the middle school and was lucky enough to get up to the high school in this role in which I've been doing for the past seven years. But I continue to participate as much as I can in athletics and coach at the younger ages and work with all of our student athletes and coaches and teams. Yeah, it's great. Thank you, Rich. And Zora, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I've lived in Amherst most of my life and I just remember, little, I was always moving. I hated sitting still. So I think that's when my parents were like, okay, we're going to put her in sports. So seventh grade, I started and I played field hockey in La Crosse at Amherst Middle School and I fell in love with both of them, especially field hockey that clicked right away. And then, yeah, I continued playing through my freshman and sophomore year field hockey and I did club field hockey. And then this year I started Nordic skiing too because I always had the winter off and I didn't like that. So I was like, okay, we'll try something new. That's been really great. Fantastic, yeah. And I shared before that I was a free sport athlete both in high school and college and I ran cross-country track and both seasons of track at Amherst College. And so for some embarrassing photos of me, they have all the teams up historically at Amherst College Gym and, you know, look at me as a 19-year-old, you know, probably not my favorite picture of myself. But it was hugely, in a serious note, really impactful on my both high school and college experience. And I found both academically as well as, you know, and athletically there was one season in college that I was injured and it was one of my poorest academic semesters I had because it wasn't in the flow and I think athletics for me, I enjoyed it for many reasons but it also gave me a schedule and it gave me a structure that I really enjoyed. And I couldn't, to your point, I was pretty stable and not, I mean, not moving around much that semester and for me that really didn't help my academic performance as well and there's a lot of research to support that. Oh yeah, I mean, just, you know, from my side of things and administering hundreds of kids every year, you know, the pattern is definitely there in terms of how well kids do when they're involved in athletics and when they're not involved in athletics and sometimes we'll get families who will want to pull one of their student athletes out if they're not performing as well in school and we try to encourage, you know, families to allow their kids to stay involved in some level because you have an extra set of eyes on, you know, our student athletes at all times with a coach and myself and student athletes schedule their time, you know, they have to schedule their time a lot better and so there's less procrastinating that kind of happens so I think it's definitely the case. Definitely the experience of that. I think that when, like everyone I've talked to says when you have the structure of like three to five after school then you get home and you're like, okay, now I need to do my homework but if you just go home, I'm like, I can do it whenever and that's when it gets like, you get off. But also just like, I think after sports I feel more awake and I feel better whereas if I go home and do nothing I kind of feel bad the whole day and it makes me more tired than having that structure in the day. Absolutely, for sure. So Rich, can you tell a little bit about how many sports we currently offer? So we offer at this point in time approximately 25 different sports which is if not the largest number of any school in the Pioneer Valley it's right up there, you know, and we have some of the things that other schools don't have which is one of the ones that Zora's doing is Nordic skiing. Ourselves and Mohawk are the only two schools in the Pioneer Valley who have Nordic skiing and we compete in the league in the Berkshires with all the Berkshires schools. So that's just an example of one of the sports that is very different that's become very popular especially for student athletes like Zora who are trying to fill a gap in between in the wintertime and you don't have to have had any experience with it prior to coming around. So that's one of the sports that we offer that's unique. Obviously Ultimate Frisbee is a huge sport in Amherst and some people blame Ultimate for lack of numbers and other sports but the reality is we have plenty of student athletes out there. There's plenty of spaces for kids to play but Ultimate is another program that's unique to us and then we offer everything, all of our running sports and field sports and everything in between and so we offer a really wide variety of programs for sure. I know one of the focuses for as long as I've been in this role has really been making sure that male and female athletes have similar experiences and I wonder as a female student athlete if you could speak to how you've experienced things as a female involved in the area of sports. Yeah, so for both field hockey and lacrosse it's an all-female team and it's so empowering because you're just working with really strong women from all ages and you have role models as coaches who are showing you that you can be strong and you can be powerful and all of that and definitely on my field hockey and lacrosse teams like we've gotten so close you have sleepovers and you bond so much and it never feels like we're below the boys team and I think Amherst does a really good job of that. It's never like okay boys lacrosse is so important and girls lacrosse like it's nothing, it doesn't matter. There's equal opportunities for both and the coaches are so great and I think there's a lot of good attention to sports but then for Nordic it was a co-ed team and that was a totally different experience and equally as good, just so different to have like, because I hadn't had male coaches before because for field hockey and lacrosse it had been female but it was, yeah for Nordic again equal attention paid to the boys and the girls we had some really good girls we had some really good boys it didn't feel like separated at all we all had the same workouts and everything so it's really good at like equality between the two genders I'd love to hear that Yeah and it's definitely a challenge at times in terms of you know there's the best practices in terms of trying to make things as equal as possible between all of our student-athletes and then you know you get into Title IX where you know the law which talks about what things you have to legally do to make sure that you know we comply with that and that's challenging at times but I think we do a pretty good job of making sure that you know we're offering you know equal opportunity to everybody you know within our athletic programs and Zora's lucky enough to have a couple of really awesome long-time coaches and Lynn Lacrosse and Carol Samuels and Kelly Zomac who is an Amherst grad and you know Michelle Rich with Field Hockey who's come on and rebuilding our program in Field Hockey which is really struggling in a few years Yeah maybe you could speak either of you could speak to the impact that coaches have on the student-athletes you know one of the things that I experienced both you know in my student days but I also see in my vantage point now is that coaches can have a different relationship than other educators with the students we have it's not better or worse but it is subsequently different than the relationship of a teacher or a parent educator or a principal so I don't know if either of you could speak to that Yeah you want to go Like I said before like both of my coaches like all of the coaches have been just such incredible role models for me and they've all like all the sports I play like we want to win obviously like that's a goal but they want you to win by having fun and working hard so they focus on that and that's been really good because I think that's just a good like lesson to know like if you work hard and you enjoy it then you're gonna like start getting the results that you want it's not like if you don't win then we suck like that's bad so they've been really good at building people up and making people feel included and especially like you said the Nordic team like a unique sport that we have at Amherst like I had never been on skis before and I was able to join the team this year and they were so welcoming and so supportive and it didn't feel awkward at all so Yeah and that's a sport that you're gonna be able to do forever Yeah exactly you know it's like the lacrosse and the field hockey you know once the knees and things like that that direction which I'm sure Mr. Morris has also experienced some you know those things become hard to do but something like Nordic skiing is that's something you're gonna you're gonna be able to do forever Yeah and I loved it it was so much fun Yeah I started skiing you know ten years ago you know cross country skiing and I was like why why wasn't I doing this when I was younger Such great exercise too Yeah definitely but in terms of in terms of the coaching you know I think all of us having been athletes it's like you go through and probably count on your hand the number of coaches who you really considered like you know good really solid quality coaches and that's you know one of the challenges to try and find people who are qualified people who have the time of day to be able to come in and work with our student athletes and traditionally you know when I was in school and I'm sure when you were in school our coaches were mostly teachers and so as people who in the building who already knew the kids we're in a different place now where you know more than half of our coaching staff are people from the outside and that can be a really positive thing because you're getting some experience with people who you know are local business owners and who do different things than in the classroom but it can also be challenging just in terms of getting new coaches up to speed who might know a sport really well but don't necessarily you know have it worked with with kids at this age group and in a school setting and following all that kind of stuff but the main thing that you know I talk about with coaches is trying to build those relationships and work with their student athletes and to kind of pull the positive things out of them as much as possible and so yeah I think you know the impact of coaches on student athletes is huge and I have a lot of coaches who also try and you know who are educators professionally but just in general I think anybody who gets involved with coaching does it because they like working with kids and if you know if you don't that becomes apparent pretty quickly you know and tend to find something else to do but I would say you know some of the most influential people in my experience you know in my life were the coaches that I had and I think it's something that we need to take advantage of within the you know school setting is using those folks to help us and we have a lot of coaches who go above and beyond in many different ways Jim Matusco who's just done with his you know 35 years of coaching basketball and Amherst 20 plus you know at Amherst High School you know he obviously took a team to a state title in 2003 but having worked with him over the past several years the things he's done behind the scenes are even more powerful than the things that he's done on the court you know working with families of kids who have been injured and needed surgery and helping with transportation you know with family members who didn't have it and working with you know schools to try and find avenues for all of our kids who don't necessarily have the resources to be able to get out and get into you know a four year college right away trying to find a path for those kids and you know and those are the things that people don't see you know they see the wins and losses and that type of thing but they don't see what's happened you know behind the scenes and our coaches I think do a great job of you know of that stuff Off the top of your head what would you guess you know how many students student athletes or how many high school students participate in inner school athletics I think some people might perceive oh it's just it's a pretty small number they hear Nordic and they might think it's four or five students which I know it's quite the opposite do you have any sense of that yeah so we have we have our 9 through 12 programs we also we're kind of unique in Amherston that we offer a lot of middle school opportunities as well which most schools in the area at least the bigger schools don't offer middle school at all so at the high school level I would say in any given year you know if you count all of our seasons together I'd say two-thirds to three-quarters of our kids participate in at least one sport you know so six to 750 kids over the course of a year participating in at least one sport Zora is unique in the sense that the multi-sport athlete is a rare breed these days and it's something that it's really the best way to go and college coaches and people will say that's what you should be doing but there's a lot of influences right now keeping people from doing that so I think it's you know it's great that Zora is doing you know multiple sports and then so at the middle school it's a similar kind of ratio we've got I would say over the course of the year more than half of the middle schoolers will participate in the school sponsored sport as well so in the spring just as an example we'll have approximately 300 high school athletes and probably 150 middle school athletes in the spring so yeah it's a substantial part of our population for sure how large are the teams that you participate in just to make it on a more local level yeah so field hockey we kind of had to bring the middle school up this year it started like you said Michelle really built up the program it was really small my freshman year and we're slowly like getting there so we can have a full varsity JV and middle school team so this year we had a varsity and JV team but the middle schoolers were part of the JV team and that was a similar situation for La Crosse but again we're building we have so many freshmen that are playing La Crosse this year so it's really exciting yeah people in the pipeline that's going to be a lot of people both for participation but also for outcomes yeah exactly and the La Crosse program for youth is getting really good so we have so many opportunities for that which is bringing people in I think and yeah Nordic's a big team how many kids were with Nordic this year you know not exactly sure there was a lot because we brought in the middle schoolers too I want to say it was close to 40 this year oh yeah it was it was 40 and a huge team brought in middle schoolers too but they were really great so given the broad participation in sports how does that athletic culture fit in or connect to the larger culture of the school I think at Amherst there's a really there's a good athletic culture but it doesn't necessarily dominate the school so I have friends from all my sports teams and I'm so close to them but I also have friends that do theater and do dance like so the athletic culture is strong and you feel very connected to your team and connected to other teams but you also it doesn't dominate like theater is huge other things are huge at the school I think that's good yeah no I would completely agree with that having like I said having grown up here and experienced athletics you know when I was a kid here to now and I think it's a similar type of thing and people give us a hard time sometimes that we're not more kind of rah rah right yeah it's true like where is everybody else football games and those sorts of things you know and part of it I try to tell people is well you know in any given season a third of our kids are participating in a sport so you know that those kids are going to be doing their own thing they're not necessarily going to be coming to games for to watch other people you know and I think people don't sort of tend to think about that as much and like Zora said we have a lot of student athletes who will are involved in tons of different things you know which is a very cool like you don't have to just be an athlete and do other things too right and there's plenty of students who play a false sport and they want to be in the the spring musical and spring dramatic you know and it's not a mutually exclusive choice that our students have to make and it's you know and I think that it would be I think one thing that we've talked about and with some of the student athletes and coaches is sort of like how do you know kind of the traditional like school spirit thing you think of with athletics right we're never going to be in a school system where everybody's coming to a football game on Friday night right this is not where we're at which I'm perfectly okay with but I think our student athletes would like to get to a place where they're supporting each other a little bit more in terms of like there's some things that we can do with you know having kind of like teams that are willing to go off the field hockey team yeah we're going to go watch the soccer team play together you know that type of stuff I think it's something that that we'd like to sort of increase so that people feel like they're being supported by their you know by their peers and other people within the community but you know in general I think we got a pretty healthy you know level of kind of school spirit around athletics where it doesn't dominate but it's definitely an important aspect and we have teams that compete and do very well you know in western mass but also at the state level so I think we got a pretty good balance I definitely agree with that I think we could get like a little more participation at coming to games just to get more of that school spirit because you definitely see like even schools that are so close like they have huge football games and that's like the thing to do on Friday like go to the football game and I think yeah we could definitely increase that and get people to also more like unknown sports because that they usually tend to get less viewers but I think overall it's a good it's a healthy culture yeah no I can say that we you know my own personal high school experience was that you know once those inter-school sport kind of conradery helps you know cross-country is not a large spectator sport for both high schools but we had a nice relation to some of our teams and we hosted a home meet and it was huge to have our you know and because we had a home meet our teams all took like a 15-minute break from their practice and just walked over and they could see the end right because cross-country you know you would see the beginning and see the end and in the middle people are off in the woods but it really does make a difference I'm glad that you're taking you know thinking about that and so as we're talking about challenges what are some other challenges that you either of you experience as it relates to the athletic program you want to start out? yeah so definitely like field hockey it's been a challenge to build that program up we had a really really strong program they were competitive in all their games going off to the postseason and then some there was a drop in like people signing up for it and we had a lot of switches of coaches so when I started my freshman year we did not win a single game and that was challenging like it's hard to keep getting yourself hyped for games if you feel like you don't have a chance because we were playing long meadow and like these big schools that have huge programs and we just we knew going into the games like it's a place that they are but Michelle's done such a great job like building us up and not making us feel discouraged like after that season we came back and she's like I'm so happy that you're all back here like this is going to be a great year she wasn't mad at us if we're losing she was like we're going to get there she said she has this quote she's like it's a marathon not a sprint like we're going to get there we just got to keep working so we actually had a league switch because of our drop in numbers and that's allowed us to be really competitive which gave us like a boost in morale and we've made it to the post season the last two years so you can like see like even just the games we're winning like see the increase it's definitely been a great thing there's lots of challenges I think within athletics at the national level where money has really come into influence sports from the little kids playing all the way up to the top which has really changed just how kind of how everything operates and in a sport like field hockey where it used to be that there were no there were no youth programs really anywhere in field hockey you know when we were younger towns like Aguam and Long Meadow and places like that started youth field hockey and so then all of a sudden when our kids are not starting until seventh grade and playing against these programs where the kids are playing from the age of five it's challenging to keep a competitive program going and keep kids interested in it and trying to get some of those opportunities for the younger kids to get involved and try things out so we can be more competitive at that point but not going crazy because I think a lot of athletics at the youth level has gone absolutely nuts and it would be nice to rein that back in a little bit and really bring what athletics should be back to the table in terms of building friendships learning how to commit and be disciplined to something and all those things that I think we've all experienced and that help us in life I think some of that's being lost at this point in time in sports where it's all sort of about me am I going to get a scholarship and that type of stuff and it's too bad that it's kind of headed in that direction but I think we can do some things to kind of change that not having super successful seasons the team that always wins it hasn't been all negative because nobody gets mad at another if they make a mistake and we're so excited when we win it's more like we get so excited when we win than we're mad at each other when we lost that's never happened and I think it's allowed us to become just a super friendly team for all the sports I do they're welcoming teams you can join if you haven't played before and I think we would lose that if it was a huge competitive atmosphere other challenges Richard? obviously the financial side of things is hard as well as you are well aware our facilities are something that are an issue and our new gymnasium is fantastic and that's really brought a nice new atmosphere to the sports that use that basketball and volleyball and what not in our PE classes but our outdoor our fields and facilities we're in the middle of this larger project looking at our fields and what we can do about them but that's a huge challenge especially being in New England where the weather fluctuates so much one year might have no rain for five months and our fields are like concrete like we had this fall we had more rain than we've ever had before and we had to shut fields down for good portions of the season and so that for me I think is one of the biggest challenges in the fall and the spring is trying to make sure that our athletes have you know the safe you know playing surface to be on and compete at that level you know field hockey now for the most part is played on astroturf or synthetic surface and so in some ways it gives us an advantage because teams come to us they have no idea what to do in our field playing on grass the ball is kind of bouncing all over but you know it's like the old parquet at the yeah we got some tricks in there no it is it's definitely the way it is and I think we do the best we can with what we have but it's definitely it's hard and when you're trying to compete at that level and other towns you know have those facilities it definitely gives them a little bit of an advantage you know and I know we're working at trying to get to that place which is great and I know it's not going to be an easy process moving forwards but we're going to get somewhere in the next couple of years but I'd say that's a big challenge and then the other one is like I said before really is finding coaches and people who have the ability and the patience and you know are willing to basically come in and do it for very little money you know gas money essentially and that's the other part that's very challenging I would say so we're just about out of time so I just wanted to offer both of you if you had one other thing that you wanted to say to the maybe a middle school student who's coming to high school or their family about to get out of being a student athlete no I would definitely recommend trying a sport because you get the teammates you get the culture you get the structure there's so much that I've gotten from sports at Amherst and even just like starting high school I came in knowing seniors and knowing like upperclassmen from preseason field hockey and that was great like that made me feel more comfortable and it's just yeah it's a great thing I'd recommend it to anyone for sure you know I think my wife gives me a hard time because I'm always recruiting kids to play lacrosse especially no matter where we are grocery store or somewhere I'm always trying to get more kids to play and I get a lot of I've never done that before you know I wouldn't be any good at that and I think that's the thing is it's like I can't tell you how many kids and people I went to school with and I've seen over the years who tried something new when they got to middle school and some of those kids are the ones who were the most successful in that sport and went on to play at the college level and so it's you just never know what you're going to be good at and so to come out and try it nobody's going to give you a hard time for coming out and trying something if you're not good at it right away and I think a lot of kids coming into middle school sort of feel like I've never done that before I don't want to take that chance and I just want to encourage Samhurst and Pellum Levin and Shootsbury who are coming into the middle school and into the high school like we've got something for you to try you know whether it's on a field or on a court or on the snow or whatever it happens to be you know we have something for everybody so I just want to get as many people out exercising as possible. Fantastic and finally Rich just if someone's watching this and saying oh I would love to coach how do I find out about that or you know how do I find out about the programs what's the best thing to do is is to reach out to me directly by either calling calling the main office of the high school and getting hold of me that way, sending an email you can go through human resources and they will direct things to me but definitely I receive a lot of emails from people saying hey I'm interested in coaching and that sort of thing and I can guarantee you when I see somebody who's interested in coaching I'm going to get back and touch you very quickly because we always need folks. So that's Ferro F-E-R-R-O-R at ARPS at Oregon. You got it, definitely. Well Zora Rich thank you so much for sharing with the community. Thank you so much. It's a very successful and I mean successful not just wins losses but successful in terms of the life experiences of our students our athletics program and the viewers thank you so much for viewing another episode. We'll be back soon with more from the Amherst Regional Public Schools. Thank you.