By Jeanne Sager
LIVINGSTON MANOR — August 27, 2002 – Kurt Warnecke is ready to dive into the school year.
After moving to Livingston Manor a month ago to take over the athletic director position left open by Patrick Sweeney’s departure in June, Warnecke has been scurrying around to get the school’s athletic teams ready to participate in this year’s events.
This is the first athletic director position for Warnecke, who came to Livingston Manor from a small school district upstate. He’s been teaching for five years.
A graduate of the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in special education and a graduate of Castleton State College in Vt. with a master’s degree, Warnecke was looking for a way to jump into administration and he’s always been athletic.
At the age of 4, he started skiing on the hills near his Utah home, and he tackled anything athletic he could manage.
A diver at the University of Utah, Warnecke went on to coach the college’s springboard and platform diving teams for 17 years.
“The beauty of diving is it develops your coordination,” he explained with a laugh. “So you can play any sport and at least look respectable doing it.
“I took every opportunity to do something athletic,” he added. “The team was always out rock climbing or playing ultimate Frisbee.”
Now he’s looking to make the various Manor athletic teams a force to be reckoned with.
For right now, he said, most things are going to stay as they are.
But in the future, Warnecke and the coaching staff hope to expand their boys’ soccer program, adding modified and jayvee teams to serve as a springboard for the varsity team.
“We have a varsity team and they’re very enthusiastic,” Warnecke said.
“I’d love to see the boys’ soccer program expand,” he added.
The girls’ program is already a “decent feeder” system, he noted, with girls moving up from modified sports to varsity throughout their high school careers and developing their skills over time.
Warnecke hasn’t had much time to look at the other parts of the athletic program, though he noted that the football team is shaping up nicely. Because he is also taking on the dean of schools title, Warnecke has spent the last month trying to acquaint himself with the Livingston Manor district and find a home for his wife and children in the local area.
One source of pride for the district will be its new soccer field, he said, which will not be used this year because it’s been graded and reseeded and is still growing with a sprinkler system on daily to speed the process.
The district will not be hosting any home games this fall because of the new field, although Warnecke hopes to plan one match on the football field so the girls can have a homecoming game.
The girls have been practicing at the facilities provided by the Livingston Manor Rotary Club, he added.
The Livingston Manor athletic program will kick off Sept. 5 with a girls’ soccer game at Chester. The first home football game will be played Sept. 7, when the Wildcats host Eldred.