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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Manzano AD Heads to Colorado

By Harold Smith

      Colorado keeps stealing my favorite people.
       The Centennial State wooed my parents from New Mexico for their retirement, and my brother and sister followed them there. Colorado also stole former Telegraph editor John Brennan from us.
       Now, our northern neighbor — for me, it's always been a nice place to visit, but not where I'd ever want to live — has snatched Manzano High athletic director Brett Tomlinson, who also was the Monarchs' boys soccer coach. Tomlinson and his doctor wife, Amy, will live in Breckenridge.
       “That's it, the skiing,” Brett Tomlinson said. “We do it all. They've got all those 14ers. There's 54 of them. We've done like 30 of them. The Continental Divide Trail is within a mile of our house.”
       The coach will teach at Summit High School near Frisco.
       “I'm so excited,” said Tomlinson, who will probably have a special-education class. “I'm also enrolled in a principal certification class (online) with Drexel University. And I might be a volunteer assistant coach because I think (Summit's) soccer coaches are from off campus. Maybe I can help. I'd like to be involved if I can.”
       Tomlinson served three years as the Monarchs' athletic director, and he was the boys soccer coach for four years. The Manzano fútbol team was 5-14, 1-7 in District 5-5A this past fall.
       But Tomlinson never was just about boys soccer. He worked hard to highlight the positive achievements of all the Monarchs athletes, regardless of sport or gender.
       “What I'll miss most is my relationship with all the coaches and all the athletes,” he said. “I enjoyed serving them and helping them promote their programs. All the coaches were supportive of each other. Every time I came to a team meeting, the coaches were talking about values. That was their primary job.”
       The transition at the AD position should be seamless. Bob Kelly, who retired as Manzano's AD after the 2004-05 season after five nonconsecutive years manning the post, is back.
       “It's going to be good for our school,” Tomlinson said. “He's there all the time anyway (as the district coordinator). He might as well get paid for it.”
       However, Manzano continues to look for someone to fill the boys soccer spot.
       “Three people have applied,” he said. “Bob Kelly will end up dealing with it, unfortunately. But they'll be all right.”
       But the biggest change at the school — with one-third of its student-body, as previously estimated by Kelly, made up of East Mountains residents — will be the retirement of Manzano principal Tim Whalen.
       “My biggest concern for Manzano at this point is who our principal is going to be,” Tomlinson said. “Is the new principal going to be as supportive as Mr. Whalen was?”
       Whalen departs July 1 after applying, but not being selected, for both the Albuquerque Public Schools superintendent and assistant superintendent positions, Tomlinson said. Whalen, even if he'd stayed on as the principal, would also have lost his job as head of the Manzano cluster, including the monetary benefit for occupying that position, under the new organizational plan instituted by APS interim Superintendent Linda Sink.
       “I think Manzano had the best spirit of any school in APS,” Tomlinson said. “Mr. Whalen was a big part of that. The (grade-point average) of our teams was like 3.3, 3.5 for all the teams. The kids that don't participate, if anything, is under 3.0.”
       Harold Smith can be reached by phone at 823-7104 or by e-mail at hsmith@mvtelegraph.com.>   

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