New Assistant Athletic Director ready for first full year

This past May, the Saint John’s community had the pleasure of welcoming Mrs. Ashley Gingrich as our new Assistant Athletic Director for girls. Mrs. Gingrich came from Trinity Episcopal where she taught Latin and coached a co-ed swim team. Mrs. Gingrich has her masters degree in sports leadership and a passion for sports. That passion stems from her childhood with her father, as Mrs. Gingrich’s father was an official with the National Hockey League. This gave her an inside look into the world of sports and she actively pursued more knowledge to bond with her father on the topic of sports. Because of this, Mrs. Gingrich knows first hand that athletics is a way to connect people. She feels she makes the best connections with student-athletes while in a sports leadership role, not in the classroom. 

While Mrs. Gingrich is specifically the Assistant Athletic director for female student athletes, she says she “doesn’t see student-athletes as girls or boys”. Instead, what she does see “is that you have to look at your teams as individual teams, and you really have to understand their needs”. She believes that as long as you know what values you want to instill, gender doesn’t matter. Mrs. Gingrich is dedicated to each and every student athlete and says her main goal is to get in front of all student-athletes and let them know that she is there for them as a resource. Her office is located in the athletics suite on the upper floor of the new building and her door is (almost) always open. 

Mrs. Gingrich spends the majority of the beginning of her day communicating with coaches and the other members of the athletic department. The entirety of the athletics department are frequently having meetings in their conference room or even in passing. When school dismisses is when her day really kicks off. She makes sure to go to any home games and even practices. What Mrs. Gingrich loves most about her job, however, is how much her day to day routine changes. “There’s no two days that are the same”, Mrs. Gingrich says, “which is what I love about my role as assistant athletic director”. She is a great resource to have around the campus for both boys and girls and a valuable addition to the Saint John’s community.