Front Office Notes from Mindset Curated VOL. 1 · ISSUE 3 · SEPT. 2026

FOR ATHLETIC DIRECTORS & HEADS OF SCHOOL VOLUME 1 · ISSUE 3 · SEPTEMBER 2026 · mindsetcurated.com

A Note from Mike:

Depending on where you are, preseason is either just starting or already in full swing. Either way, the real work in the athletic office has begun again. Supporting coaches. Managing parent relationships. Developing student-athletes. Catching problems before they become crises.

Building This Fall

The Full Roster

Athletic leadership development for everyone who runs your program

Most professional development in school athletics stops at the AD’s office door. But a department’s success depends on far more than one person. The first-year PE teacher coaching JV. The assistant coach learning to lead. The veteran head coach who’s never had formal leadership development. The aspiring administrator trying to understand how a department actually runs.

They all shape the student-athlete experience.

This winter, Will Bladt and I are launching The Full Roster, a structured, relationship-centered professional development experience for everyone who helps run an athletics program. The centerpiece is The Huddle: eight sessions across nine months in small cohorts of athletics professionals from different schools and sports.

If coach development is truly part of the operating system, it can’t be an occasional perk. It has to be built into how we develop the people responsible for the experience.

Learn more: mindsetcurated.com/thefullroster

Sideline Ascent

Each week, Taryn Sheehan and I sit down with coaches and athletic leaders for honest conversations about what the work actually looks like. Mentorship. Leadership. Emotional labor. Culture. Building environments worth being part of.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

What Athletic Leaders Should Be Paying Attention To

Five stories from the past month point to the same tension in school athletics: a widening gap between what schools say they value and what their systems are built to support.

On the Radar

1. The Governance Problem Isn’t the Rule. It’s Who Gets to Change It.

The expected collapse of the Alabama Independent School Association’s athletics program is being framed as a fight over classification. The more interesting story is governance.

Coaches and athletic directors were directly affected by decisions but had no meaningful formal way to influence them. Eventually, member schools found another path and started building a new association. That new organization is reportedly writing in a two-thirds vote requirement for future bylaw changes.

That detail matters. The problem wasn’t one bad rule. It was a system where the people affected by decisions didn’t believe they had legitimate access to the process.

Most schools treat their league or association as background infrastructure. It isn’t. It’s a governance relationship, and governance relationships fail in predictable ways: unclear authority, undefined decision rights, limited stakeholder voice, and eventually informal workarounds that outgrow the formal system.

The leadership question: Where do the people affected by your decisions have a voice before frustration turns into resistance?

2. NIL Isn’t Just Changing Recruiting. It’s Testing Program Stability.

A recent look at Florida high school athletics shows how fast NIL, open enrollment, and relaxed transfer rules can reshape a local sports ecosystem.

The headline is football. The real issue is mobility.

When athletes can move freely and money enters the equation, programs get less stable. Coaches aren’t just building teams. They’re managing retention, expectations, and the possibility that an athlete’s next opportunity is one phone call away.

Independent schools may be tempted to dismiss this as a big public-school football problem. That would be a mistake. The same dynamics show up more quietly in lacrosse, golf, tennis, swimming, and basketball. No public NIL deals, no headline transfers, but families have more access than ever to club relationships, private development pathways, and programs promising exposure.

The question isn’t whether your school participates in NIL. It’s whether your department would recognize instability before it became a crisis.

The leadership question: What is your early-warning system for roster instability? Who is watching for unusual transfer conversations, declining engagement, coach-parent friction, club conflicts, or groups of athletes weighing alternatives?

Rules alone won’t protect a program. Systems might.

3. The Recruiting Market Is Changing Faster Than Our Conversations With Families.

College football’s growing reliance on experienced transfer quarterbacks is another sign the traditional recruiting pathway is shifting.

For decades the message to young athletes was simple: work hard, develop, get good film, get recruited. That path still exists. It’s just more complicated now.

College programs can acquire players with proven college production. From a roster-management standpoint, a transfer is less projection and less risk than a high school recruit. And this isn’t limited to quarterbacks. Portals, NIL, roster limits, and immediate competitive pressure are changing how colleges evaluate talent across sports.

The market may be moving faster than the guidance families are getting. That’s where athletic departments and coaches have both an opportunity and a responsibility. Hope and honesty aren’t opposites. We can encourage ambitious goals while helping families understand how the marketplace has changed.

The leadership question: Are we preparing families for the recruiting market that exists today, or the one from five years ago?

4. AD Burnout Is a Job Design Problem Before It’s a Wellness Problem.

Minnesota reported that roughly one in six activities director positions turned over in the past year. The reasons are familiar: parent conflict, coaching issues, expanding responsibilities, constant events, pressure from every direction. Most of all, a role that keeps growing without being redesigned.

This is one of the most common patterns I see in athletic departments. Nobody designs an impossible job on purpose. It happens gradually. Someone hands the AD an admissions role. Then an administrative project. Then more supervision. Then another sport. Then a complicated parent issue becomes “just part of the job.”

Over time the position becomes something very different from the job description, while the authority, staffing, and support stay the same.

Independent schools are especially vulnerable. An AD may also be a teacher, coach, dorm parent, admissions ambassador, and the school’s visible face at nearly every event. That’s not a problem by itself. It’s a problem when nobody has intentionally designed the role to account for it.

The answer isn’t another conversation about resilience. It’s a role audit. What does this person actually do? What decisions can they make? What support do they have? What happens when seasonal demands overlap? And most importantly, what should they no longer be responsible for?

5. Parents Say They Value Education-Based Athletics. The Test Is What Happens Under Pressure.

New NFHS research is encouraging. Parents overwhelmingly support continued investment in school-based activities and athletics, and they say they value belonging, teamwork, connection, and the broader educational experience.

That’s meaningful data. It also deserves careful reading. Surveys tell us what people believe in theory. They don’t tell us what people do when a competing opportunity shows up.

A parent can value belonging and still consider transferring their child for playing time. A family can appreciate the mission and still leave for exposure. Neither makes them dishonest. It just shows the gap between stated values and behavior under pressure.

The strongest programs won’t rely on messaging to retain families. They’ll build relationships, communicate consistently, help families understand the purpose of the experience, and create enough real connection that when another opportunity appears, the relationship has weight.

Satisfaction is not commitment. Commitment is built through connection.

What Connects These Stories

Values are not a strategy. We say we value education-based athletics, stability, coach development, healthy relationships. But values don’t protect themselves. They have to show up in decision-making structures, defined roles, communication systems, documented workflows, and consistent expectations. A mission statement without an operating system is an aspiration.

The AD job is expanding faster than the role is being redesigned. NIL, transfers, parent expectations, mental health, social media, compliance. The complexity keeps growing, yet most departments are still structured around assumptions from a different era. The question isn’t how to ask ADs to handle more. It’s what the role needs to become to handle what the job now requires. Replacing burned-out leaders without redesigning the job just restarts the cycle.

College athletics is already changing high school athletics. The portal, NIL, and professionalization aren’t staying at the college level. They’re changing family expectations, recruiting, and athlete mobility. Eventually every school will have to answer: what are we actually promising families when we talk about athletics? For independent schools, four years in one community with long-term coach relationships is still a powerful value proposition. But it can’t be marketing language. It has to be an experience strong enough to compete with the alternatives.

One Question for September

Mind the gap. Where is the space between what your athletic department says it values and what its systems actually reinforce?

Front Office Notes is published quarterly by Mindset Curated Advisory Services. Mike Marich partners with independent schools to build mission-aligned athletic programs through leadership development, organizational strategy, and culture design.