St. Mary’s Ryken High School did not have to go far to find its new athletic director. In fact, he’s still in the same office.
Jon Lombardo, who joined the staff a year ago as assistant athletic director and head boys lacrosse coach, became the school’s new leader in charge of the athletics department effective July 1.
“I joked with everybody in the interview, ‘At least you know I’m not applying so I can get the nice office,’ he said. “I’m still here, it’s my same seat. I’m sitting at my desk that I sat in all year last year and currently working on tying up some loose ends on some schedules and coaching contracts and so the transition has been seamless. I thank all of our leadership team here at St. Mary’s Ryken and Duane for that. He spent really the last day of his contract teaching me about being the commissioner for the WCAC field hockey conference.”
Lombardo takes over for Duane Atherton, who was hired as Chopticon High School head football coach in early May.
“I’m excited to move forward and just kind of keep on building the model that he [Atherton] put in place and building on what we hope to do here through athletics and continue to make an impact through alignment with the mission and vision of the school,” Lombardo said.
Lombardo will remain as head coach of the St. Mary’s Ryken boys lacrosse team, which he expressed interest in when interviewing for the athletic director position. His first season at the helm this spring, the Knights had their season ended abruptly due to the coronavirus pandemic after a 1-1 record with the win coming in double overtime in what would be the team’s final game.
“That was a huge part. I wanted to remain in my role as a head coach for the lacrosse team and that’s one of my passions still and they’re very much one and the same except it’s just a larger team if you will with the athletic department and being an AD rather than just the head coach of the lacrosse team,” Lombardo said.
The school will have an easy transition with Lombardo becoming the leader of St. Mary’s Ryken’s athletic department.
“Our community is excited about Jon becoming our AD,” Knights head football coach Aaron Brady said. “It will be an easy transition for our staff since he has already played a big role in the transition to the new athletic facility. Jon is extremely organized and brings an energy to our teams that will continue to guide and mentor our student-athletes to the top of the WCAC.”
Lombardo said the make and model of the athletic department has three phases.
“The first phase being the structural piece,” Lombardo said. “That’s the behind the scenes, the transactional stuff, getting schedules in place, transportation and officials and your coaches set, making sure you have what you need to run an athletic department and Duane was so good at that and really brought some organization and his efficiency to that and, I’m lucky, I just get to continue tweaking and building off of what’s he already done.
“The second phase is to really provide a vision and the third phase being create an impact on our student-athletes, on our community, our faculty, our staff that is going to be a transformational experience for them that they use to align with the identity of the school and the mission and the vision of that.”
St. Mary’s Ryken head girls basketball coach Toyja Somerville has already seen some of these aspects in Lombardo before he got promoted.
“I’ve seen first hand his commitment to developing young men with impeccable integrity, solid academics and an unwavering commitment to SMR,” Somerville said. “That, paired with enthusiasm, solid work ethic, strong interpersonal and organizational skills and a commitment to supporting all programs of SMR make Jonathan Lombardo the ideal person to carry on the mission of athletics at SMR. He personally made a great impression on me when he had his entire team sitting front row at one of our games last season, cheering on the girls in a tight game.”
One of Lombardo’s top priorities as he takes over as athletic director is doing what he can to get athletes back on the field from the COVID-19 pandemic and hopefully playing games at some point.
“I’ve been a part of committees now for months on what the return to school looks like, what the return to athletics looks like and we’ve drafted up a couple plans and proposals and waiting on some approvals from obviously the powers to be and who needs to kind of stamp those, being the local government and county government, but we’ve got some good plans in the works and hope to not just for the sake of competing and being out on a field, but first and foremost providing our students and community the safest and healthiest of transitions back to that and what that looks like,” he said. “Obviously sports is a huge piece to a lot of people’s experience here and if we can do that and roll out a plan in the safest way possible that we feel is going to guarantee everything we can control is controlled in terms of health and safety, then we’ll do that.”
St. Mary’s County Public Schools, in a June 29 press release, approved a return to outdoor-only summer training and conditioning beginning July 13. Lombardo said St. Mary’s Ryken’s proposals, which were still waiting to be approved as of July 1, are similar to that.
“We’re waiting to have ours approved and then just determining what that timeline will be that we feel comfortable with as far as St. Mary’s Ryken,” he said. “Once it does get approved, then turning to, ‘OK, what do we feel comfortable with and how can we guarantee we’ve controlled all the things we need to control within our power to guarantee a safe and healthy environment.’ It’ll look very similar I’m sure as I’m reading and researching a lot of other schools; private schools, public schools, different states, different county’s plans. They look all somewhat similar and I think that’s a good thing just because you want to study those and if anybody has already done it or working on it having them do similar if they’re successful is a good thing. So it’ll look very similar I’m sure.”
Twitter: @PWSoMdSports
