During the last few months, Liberty’s administration has faced challenging decisions regarding the position of a designated athletic director. Over the summer, the school district decided to remove Liberty’s athletic director due to budget cuts. Nonetheless, after realizing how important an athletic director is, Matt Stuart was hired to fill the role.

The district’s decision-making process was back and forth, as district officials tried to balance Liberty’s costs while still providing students with a quality athletics program.

“They tried to support athletics as much as possible without having a full-time director three different times. They didn’t know how to deal with this,” Assistant Principal Danielle Zelinski said.

Zelinski also described the importance of an athletic director, and why the district ultimately needed to hire one.

“A lot of things sports directors do are behind the scenes. Without doing those tasks or jobs, games aren’t run properly, or things aren’t scheduled,” Zelinski said.

While it took some time for the administration to make a final decision, they ultimately decided to hire Matt Stuart as Liberty’s new athletic Director. In an interview with Stuart, he described his personal experience with athletics at multiple schools.

“I used to be the athletic coordinator at Skyline until 2019, and then I moved to Arizona where I’ve been coaching and teaching for the last few years,” said Stuart.

Stuart is enthusiastic about his new position and is excited to take the next step in his athletic career.

“I have loved coaching for a long time, but I’m going to be an athletic director now. This is an awesome opportunity,” said Stuart.