Lori Riley: 21 years and 66 state titles later, retiring AD Tammy Schondelmayer leaves Bloomfield High athletics in a far better place

In Tammy Schondelmayer’s 21-year tenure as athletic director at Bloomfield High, the Warhawks have won 66 state championships.

For a Class S school with only 500 students, that’s a pretty solid track record and indeed, the boys and girls track teams have accounted for many of the titles. But there have also been championships in football, girls and boys basketball (this year for the boys) and boys soccer.

But while the titles are celebrated, Schondelmayer - who is retiring after this season - is most proud of the biggest banner in the gym listing sportsmanship awards.

“When I came in, I wanted to change the perception of Bloomfield in the state,” said Schondelmayer, 55, who lives in Manchester. “It took about 10 years but we started winning sportsmanship awards and we’ve won 26 - the football officials, basketball officials, baseball officials. The CCC, fall, winter and spring. Seven Michael’s Cup awards, five in a row, the past five years.

“One of my goals was to have our kids be judged by their character and their sportsmanship. The coaches bought in and the kids bought in and it changed.”

Schondelmayer came in after Jack Cochran, who was both the football coach and athletic director and who was known for running up scores, prompting the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference to institute a rule (since removed) that penalized football teams for winning by more than 50 points.

She had a different way of seeing things. Growing up in New London, Schondelmayer said she was discriminated against because she was a girl in sports and so the need for equity and fairness was instilled in her at an early age. As a woman of color, she also brings a different perspective to the position.

In her tenure at Bloomfield, she had to deal with the firestorm that surrounded transgender female runner Terry Miller and the issues with COVID-19 the last two years.

The stress of the job, which encompasses so much more than it did when she first started, is eating at her and so now it’s time to go.

“As a younger athletic director it was a challenge to solve all the problems,” she said. “I wanted to solve every single problem. And you can’t. You kill yourself trying. You’re the shield for all the coaches, battling for your school, your kids. It was always satisfying but it gets heavy and it’s stressful.”

Schondelmayer coached at Hartford Public and Bloomfield and taught physical education before becoming AD. She went to St. Bernard in Montville, where she played softball, then went on to star as a shortstop at Eastern Connecticut State University. Her team won the Division III national championship in 1986, her freshman year, and she was inducted into the school’s sports hall of fame in 2009.

She remembered encountering discrimination for the first time in fifth grade.

“We’d go to recess and I was the first one picked [to play baseball],” she said. “I was the best athlete. I know I’m good enough to play [Little League]. So we go to tryouts and I’m doing my thing and I’m watching these boys mess up, not make a play, can’t make it to first base with their throw, they can’t field a ground ball, they can’t hit and I can do those things. And I don’t get picked on any teams. There were six teams and I didn’t get picked.”

When she became athletic director at Bloomfield, one of the first things she did was take on the football booster club. She wanted it to benefit all sports. The booster club eventually decided to disband.

“She is not afraid to speak up for what’s right and what’s right for her kids or her school, whether it’s an unpopular belief or not,” Bulkeley athletic director Diane Callis said.

When Miller, who was at Bulkeley, transferred to Bloomfield, the chorus of voices who didn’t feel that Miller belonged on a girls track team followed and Schondelmayer had to serve as a shield for her coaches and track athletes. Because Miller was getting harassed at track meets, she had to hire another coach.

“As a female athlete, I could see both sides of the story, but as an educator it’s all about inclusion and doing what’s best for your students,” Schondelmayer said. “And Terry was one of my student-athletes and she is a girl. I know that people will find that hard to understand but if you meet Terry - she’s a girl, not acting like a girl so she can go win a track meet.”

Miller graduated in 2020, the year COVID-19 shut down spring high school sports. Bloomfield had to shut its football season down completely and 7-on-7 football, which some schools played, wasn’t allowed. The town and the state and the CIAC made the decisions and Schondelmayer and the other athletic directors were just the messengers.

“I fielded the complaints from the coaches, the parents, the kids who were heartbroken, the seniors who missed out,” she said. “It was heartbreaking and difficult for those kids. The kids came in, their parents: ‘What can you do?’ ‘There’s nothing I can do.’ It was hard to say that.”

Schondelmayer wants to leave on a good note. Her facilities are updated: the football field, the track, the weight room. The Bloomfield coaches, she feels, are all top notch.

Coach Kevin Moses, whose boys basketball team won a Division IV state title this year, is sad.

“She’s really strong on accountability, she holds all her coaches and athletes accountable for whatever we do,” said Moses, who is an assistant football coach. “How Tammy is trickles down to the coaches. We strive to be the best we can be at all times. We are examples of her. I look at it like she is the tree and we are the branches.

“It’s going to be some heavy shoes to fill.”

She will continue to serve on the executive boards of the National Organization of Minority Athletic Directors and the Global Community of Women in High School Sports. She wants to go to Mardi Gras. She wants to go to a softball tournament with her travel team in Utah in October (she still plays a roving shortstop position at age 55 but needs a pinch runner when she gets on base because of a bum knee).

“She’s been an amazing athletic director for her school and her community,” Callis said. “She understands the dynamics of Bloomfield and what is best for that community.”

Lori Riley can be reached at lriley@courant.com.