While athletes on the fall sports teams head to their first few scrimmages in preparation for the new season, South’s new athletic coordinator is doing some preparation of his own.
From arranging athlete’s bus schedules and ensuring the proper athletic equipment arrives in time for the new season, to ensuring the coaching staff is prepared for game days and that the clocks in the school’s athletic facilities are functional, Anthony Guidotti has his hands full in the last few weeks of summer.
Hired by the WW-P board of education on August 25 as South’s new athletic coordinator, replacing Matthew Keith, who accepted a job as the assistant principal at Pennsauken High School, Guidotti is wasting no time in adjusting to his new position. Fortunately, the district did not have to look far in finding someone familiar with experience in athletics.
Not only has Guidotti been a physical education teacher at the middle school level, he already has experience as a coach for both the middle and high school levels and he has experience coordinating athletics for grades K-8.
And the best part? “I bleed Pirate already,” says Guidotti, who is a Class of 1992 WW-P graduate.
Guidotti’s new responsibilities will also include ensuring that visiting teams have a place to go when they arrive at South, coordinating rainy day make-up games, and all of the other organizational duties that help the athletic department function.
“There is a lot to learn right now,” says Guidotti. Adjusting to the new position will be easy for Guidotti, who says he is an organized person. Now, he says, the job simply entails “learning the responsibilities and putting them into your own organization.”
And while it seems there is no room left on Guidotti’s plate, he will be continuing to learn the ropes of the new job while also welcoming another change into his life: in less than a month, he and his wife are expecting their first child. His wife, a school psychologist with the WW-P district, will be taking a year off to tend to the newest member of the family.
Guidotti’s connections to WW-P extend back to 1986, when his family moved from Long Island to West Windsor when he was in seventh grade, simply because his parents wanted a change in scenery and they had heard about the district’s educational reputation. His father was a mechanical engineer in Manhattan, and his mother worked part-time for 15 years as a secretary in West Windsor’s police department. Back then West Windsor was still known as more of a rural, farming community. “They had their fill of Long Island,” said Guidotti.
At the time the family had moved, there was only one high school (currently High School South), and grades 7 through 12 were located at the high school, he said. But that changed when he entered eighth grade, as he became a member of the first graduating class at Community Middle School, he said.
Guidotti earned his bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and then his certification in physical education from Kean University. When he finished at Kean in December, 1998, he was still living in West Windsor and began as a substitute teacher in the district. He was hired full-time in January, 1999. Later he earned his master’s in education administration from Rider.
He has served as a physical education teacher at the fourth and fifth grade levels and still holds that position. He has coached middle and high school athletics, including seventh grade girls’ basketball at Grover Middle School, and spring track at Community Middle School, where he coached for seven years. He was also the assistant coach of South’s winter track team this past year.
Recently, he has served as the K-8 physical education coordinator, and then accepted a position as the K-8 athletic coordinator before the position for the high school coordinator opened up.
Guidotti says he decided to apply for the position because he has always wanted to hold a principal or vice principal position, but his passion has always been to hold an administrative position in athletics.
“You can’t get up in the world if you don’t do anything in it,” Guidotti says.
