Heading into its second year of operation, Orcutt Academy is a small organization with big expectations.
Along with adding four more fall sports, school administrators tapped Chad McKenzie to help propel the school’s sports program to new heights as its athletic director.
“Everything’s fresh and exciting,” McKenzie said. “The athletes here are happy to be a part of something. They’re building friendships, character, and success.”
Born and raised in Santa Maria, the 32-year-old McKenzie played football and soccer at Righetti High School. He graduated from Cal Poly SLO in 2002 with a degree in kinesiology and coached at Cabrillo High School for five years.
He also coached Orcutt’s Babe Ruth All-Stars and most recently served for two years as head of Lompoc Valley Middle School’s physical education department.
“My coaching experience made me realize that teaching and coaching was what I wanted to do,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie is taking over for the retired Bob Jimenez, the former Righetti High School athletic director brought in to get Orcutt Academy’s program off the ground. The school offered 10 sports in its first year, including tennis, soccer, track, and cross-country. Boys and girls’ volleyball, cheerleading, and a boys’ golf team have been added for this fall. School administrators plan to add several new sports each year.
“This is the start of a new high school,” McKenzie said. “It’s all baby steps right now. If we can maintain and add [sports], we’re doing pretty well.
“We’re trying to do what we can with what we have until we have them all,” he added.
School principal Alan Majewski, a former basketball coach at Righetti, said he’s excited to see McKenzie grow with the school’s program.
“Chad is doing an extremely difficult job,” Majewski said. “We feel like we’ve hired the best guy to work that magic.”
The road the program has taken thus far, according to Majewski, has exceeded all of his goals.
“I’ve changed my expectations,” he said. “I didn’t know how much was possible—now I believe everything is possible. You surround yourself with people who have a vision and parents that want to get things done and miracles happen.”
Majewski added that football and baseball “aren’t far off.” However, as with most schools, funding is the determining factor for which sports will be added—and the biggest hurdle to Orcutt Academy’s growth.
With a student body of fewer than 300 youths—about half of whom are student-athletes—the school currently shares a campus with May Grisham Elementary and Orcutt Junior High School. Besides volleyball games in its gymnasium, there are no athletic facilities on school grounds for its teams to call home. The school uses a gym at Lakeview Junior High for basketball and rents a field from Santa Maria’s Recreation and Parks Department for soccer. McKenzie is working with the department and the Orcutt Union School District to secure other venues.
Since the school is expanding by one grade each year, there won’t be a varsity team at Orcutt Academy until 2011. While the Spartans are independent for now, McKenzie’s goal is to join a small league—probably the Condor League—for three to four years and then move up to compete against bigger local high schools. Current sports schedules include a mix of competition from Condor League schools and matches against Santa Maria, Righetti, and Pioneer Valley high schools.
With an emphasis on education and preparing its students for college, Orcutt Academy differs from other high schools when it comes to attitudes toward athletics. That might change, though, McKenzie said, as the school continues to evolve.
For now, McKenzie explained, student-athletes who might not have received playing time elsewhere will have the chance to participate as Spartans.
“We don’t have the attitudes, we have good sportsmanship,” McKenzie said. “They didn’t win a whole lot last year, but they still enjoyed playing. Win or lose, given the opportunity, their attitudes are great.”
McKenzie is learning on the job, and his next order of business is to hire coaches for girls’ soccer, boys’ and girls’ basketball, boys’ tennis, boys’ volleyball, and girls’ track. He hopes to get all the necessary athletic equipment for his teams and otherwise have everything go smoothly in his first year.
By teaming up with parents and booster clubs, McKenzie said the school’s athletic program is bound for success.
“We have a vision of greatness, and we’re already seeing it,” he said.
Staff Writer Jeremy Thomas sees greatness every day in the mirror. Contact him at
jthomas@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2009.
