Join our Team! A Conversation with Mr. Fribush

Recently, Blake has added a lot of new coaches to our athletics program. Swim and Dive, Girls Basketball, and just recently Softball have all welcomed new and familiar coaches (coached in years past, Blake staff, etc) to our athletic program. The Blake Beat sat down with Blake’s athletic director, Mr. Fribush, to ask questions about the hiring process and the evaluation period for hiring new coaches for our teams.

When asked about what he “looks for” and “wants” in a coach, Fribush says that he wants coaches that “provide a positive experience for our students” and ensure that they “can take all (of our student’s goals) and blend them into what is the best experience”. 

Next, we spoke to Fribush about Blake’s decision last school year to part ways with certain coaches and how the look for new voices for the athletic program came about. He states “Coaches decide to move on for a variety of different reasons.” “Many of our coaches move on because they have other professional opportunities, or because the time away from their main professional job is difficult to manage with coaching responsibilities, and sometimes they move on because they have family or personal responsibilities to conflict with.” Seemingly so, these decisions are so far a positive for our athletics program. New hires have been making a positive impact. One notable hire is Coach Boehlert, who has completely flipped the Girls Basketball program. The team has an early 5-4 conference record, in comparison to last year’s final conference record of 1-7.

We were curious to know if there was a specific portal or application Mr.Fribush used to find coaches, and if he ever had to reach out to contenders rather than them applying on their own. He explains, “Positions are posted in…MCPS careers, which is a link for MCPS hires, from anything from teaching to other personnel”. 

By popular demand in our athletic community, we asked Mr. Fribush a question that has been on a lot of Blake Bengal’s minds. With first-year Blake Athletic Trainer, Ms. Tiffany, moving forward with another working position early this year; we asked about finding a new full-time trainer. Fribush tells us that, “The athletic training position is a little bit different from the coaching positions.“ “It involves Montgomery County’s athletics unit as well (which is) an office that oversees the athletic training positions and the health and safety coordinator in MCPS athletics.

To wrap up our conversation we asked Mr. Fribsuh about the process of a teacher acquiring a job as a coach. He explains that this process could be immense into a legal action called “grieves”. Mr. Fribush states “What could happen is if we were to hire someone who is not a teacher, and a teacher had applied for the position, that teacher could do something called grieve the hiring of someone who is not a teacher” He tells us about a solution to this problem if it ever occurs, explaining that “A legal term could read the hiring and it would go to an arbitration hearing with a third party mediator who’s not in the school.”

Thank you Mr. Fribush for sitting down with us and giving an insight into Blake Athletics’ hiring process.