If Lisa Rich is as good an athletic director as she was a softball coach, some great things are on the horizon for the Robbinsville High School sports teams.
From 2016-21 (with 2020 canceled due to COVID-19), Rich’s Ravens teams went 113-22 with three state championships and two Mercer County Tournament titles.
“I’ll be honest, one of the hardest programs to manage at our school is the softball program,” former RHS Athletic Director Tom Brettell said. “It’s been highly successful, but that’s not an easy job and she was able to go in there and keep that program at the level it was when she inherited it. I think she’ll do the same thing with the athletic department.”
Brettell is now an RHS vice principal and was on the search committee along with Vice Principal Nicole Mumpower, Principal Molly Avery and former AD Curtis Wyers (now a Pond Road assistant principal). Brettell and Wyers both know what it takes to run an athletic program.
“She’s got all the skills for an AD,” Brettell said. “She’s just a very organized person, very on top of things, detail-oriented. She’s a good decision-maker, and she’s a winner.”
She has also grown up professionally at Robbinsville High.
“She’s homegrown, she’s one of us, so that’s important,” Brettell continued. “When I was in that job (after being varsity baseball coach) it helped a lot. You already have the relationships built not only with the coaches but the administration and the players and the kids. That foundation is already there so she can just hit the ground running. That’s why the committee thought she was perfect for the job.”
Just as Rich feels the job is perfect for her.
“I’m excited to see what we can accomplish,” she said. “I love sports. It’s a great job to have for someone who’s been around athletics.”
Rich has hung around them all her life.
The Titusville native was a star pitcher for Hopewell Valley High in the late 2000s and pitched for a year at Millersville University before earning her bachelor’s in education and master’s in curriculum and instruction from the Pennsylvania school.
She began teaching engineering at Robbinsville in 2014 and, after stepping down from the softball position, Rich began investigating other areas. Upon gaining a supervisor’s certificate in 2020, there were thoughts of supervising the school’s STEM program.
“But I could never give up being around sports,” Rich said. “Stepping down from coaching was a very challenging decision for me. It was something I don’t necessarily regret, but it was very hard and something I miss every day.”
When Dee Taylor became interim athletic director in the early 2020s, Rich worked as a site manager for athletic contests and was asked by Taylor to do scheduling.
“I like to schedule things so I did it for free for a season,” she recalled. “Then they found out there was a stipend that was called the assistant to the athletic director.”
So she did the same things and got paid when Matt Dalessio became AD in January 2022.
“I started doing a little more here and there, learning some things,” Rich said. “Matt was on (medical) leave for a couple months so I was doing his job while I was teaching full time last fall. I got a little taste of it, doing everything but putting in purchase orders.
“This wasn’t necessarily something I aspired to five years ago. It just naturally progressed. Working as Matt’s assistant I absorbed all the different aspects of the athletic department.”
And much like Dorothy suddenly realized she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Lisa realized she wasn’t just in her softball dugout.
“It’s much bigger than when you’re coaching,” Rich said. “You don’t see all the moving parts. I naturally enjoyed organizing, scheduling and doing all those different aspects of the job. So I started taking a little more responsibility. When the opening came I jumped at the opportunity and I had a lot of support in district with coaches and staff to lead me in the right direction.”
Being organized and meticulous is a good start for the job. But Rich has other advantages that made her a worthy choice.
For one, she has been a coach guiding a team of athletes. Now, she is guiding a department of coaches.
“It’s endless the things you can say about coaching,” Rich said. “I was super thankful to be pushed very hard as a coach and have a very successful feeder program and have athletes that challenged me on a daily basis. I had to step up my game every day and do all that hard work.
“When you’re a coach and athlete you learn to work with each other and communicate and work as a team. It’s those same life skills you need when working in this situation.”
Another advantage is her depth of experience.
“She’s able to be visible, she’s able to be there,” Brettell said. “She has the dedication to make sure everybody knows — parents, coaches, players — that ‘I’m there to support you.’
“It’s a tough job. People don’t give that job enough credit. People say, ‘It’s just athletics.’ It’s not just athletics. It’s far from it. That job is a beast. You gotta be there and you gotta be present and she’s able to do that, which is a bonus.”
And, as Brettell alluded, learning her craft in the halls (and on the field) at RHS serves as a plus for Rich when taking on the challenge.
“My coaches are so supportive moving into this position that I can’t even express how thankful I am,” Rich said. “They wished me luck as I was interviewing and it’s been so cool to see. I’ve been able to make those relationships with all of those people. It just makes things easier.
“If we ever do have to have a hard conversation, they know me as someone who has supported them and I’m there to be their support. We’re gonna work through things together.
“We’re a big team and I think that’s the biggest part of an athletic department — having it be a team culture from the top right down into our JV and freshman programs. We’re all here for the same reason.”
Rich feels her biggest influences in reaching this point have been the administrators, citing Avery, Mumpower, Brettell and Wyers for their support.
“I have so many people here I can bounce questions off of, I can reach out any time,” she said. “They’ve all pushed me to do other things. They’ve been a huge spark and I can’t thank them enough for what they’ve done.”
As far as her initial goals, Rich would first and foremost like to keep a veteran coaching staff intact.
“We have a lot of coaches that have been 10-plus years in the program; that speaks volumes to their dedication to the school and district in general,” she said. “I’ve inherited good coaches and would like to keep them around for a long time.”
Rich would also like to work more intently with the middle school program and provide more community outreach in order to build up the numbers of some teams that have fallen on hard times with participation. And there is always a quest to upgrade facilities and possibly construct more fields in order to have more simultaneous events.
But the bottom line — the goal beyond all other goals — is to provide the student-athletes with what they need through moral support or tangible improvements. And her coaches are the conduits.
“I’ve taken my example from Tom and Curtis and Dee,” Rich said. “It’s super important to be visible and the kids should know, ‘Hey, the athletic director’s name is Lisa Rich.’ I also found that the coaches are the first person those kids go to see for things. After that, I’m here also for them. I’m an extra level of support. I’m a cheerleader for them.
“I have to restrain myself sometimes on the sideline. I get just as excited as the coaches do when I see our kids being successful. I kind of pick my time when I’m cheering and doing things like that. Sports are hard. Those kids are dedicated; they come out every day and hats off to all those kids who do that.”
In summing it up, Brettell feels that Rich — whose office is directly across from him after the two practiced next to each other during their coaching years — has all the qualities needed to succeed.
“She’s there for support, but she’s not there to micromanage anybody,” he said. “She’s able to talk to coaches. She’s been there and she’s done it. Her head is in the right spot. She’s not a ‘me’ person, she’s about everybody else.
“That’s a good start for her, that’s natural for her. That’s where I think her focus is. And on keeping kids involved. It’s a challenge these days.”
Rich has never shied from a challenge, and she won’t start now.
“I’ve always liked to problem solve and be someone who is there for people,” she said. “When I applied for the position and saw the support I got from coaches and people who weren’t involved in athletics, to see that they think I’m capable of doing this job makes me proud of what I’ve been able to do as a person in this district. And I have a lot of exciting things I’d like for our athletic department to accomplish.”
If it’s as exciting as what her softball teams accomplished, it will be fun to watch it all unfold.
