The high school’s athletic department does a good job fostering athletes and helping seniors find spots in college athletic programs, according to an evaluation by the Connecticut Interstate Athletic Conference.
At Athletic Director Joseph Orazietti’s request, CIAC did a free audit of Derby’s athletic programs, including the mission statement, training curriculum, equity of resources, administration and player evaluation methods.
The CIAC’s evaluation program is a pilot program, and Derby was one of the first schools to participate.
The findings were presented at last week’s Board of Education meeting.
The report singles out Orazietti and Assistant Athletic Director Matthew Bradshaw for doing a good job with limited resources.
The report also lists a number of suggestions for way to make the program better.
Recommendations for Derby coaches include having them monitor their athletes’ academic progress.
CIAC representative Robert Lehr said coaches should schedule individual meetings with athletes at the beginning of the season to set goals for athletic development — with follow-up meeting at the end of each season to assess progress.
“We know at the end of the season, people are just rushing to get out of there, because seasons are long – 12 to 15 weeks,” he said, but added a postseason meeting would be “a tremendous tool … it tells you how they felt about that experience.”
The CIAC recommends the district give the athletic department the money it needs to improve, but a specific dollar amount is not mentioned.
Orazietti was pleased with the evaluation.
“They did a fair assessment of our program,” he said, explaining that they measured Derby both against larger schools in the state and an ideal framework that “no one can achieve.”
“Their goal is to provide the best opportunity for coaches and athletes that they can,” he said. “I thought we did very well, especially since we were one of the first small school to do it, and the third school to do it in the state. The schools they did previous to ours were full time ADs and larger schools.”
Orazietti said that he had already begun implementing some of the recommendations, including increasing communication with parents.
While there used to be one large meeting at the beginning of the year for parents of athletes and prospective athletes, Orazietti has broken it down by season. He’s also worked on the evaluation of players, which was something the CIAC stressed in their evaluation.
“They wanted more formal evaluations – we do informal, verbal evaluations of our players, but they wanted a skills sheet, so we’re going to do that,” he added.
