Wright wrapping up AD career at Sand Creek
SAND CREEK – Robert Wright is retiring for the second time, but he has no plans to sit back and relax.
“I’m happiest when I’m doing something,” Wright said, who is Sand Creek’s athletic director until June 30. “I I’m going to stay active.”
Wright will remain working with other Tri-County Conference athletic directors, in an advisory role, and plans to officiate more volleyball games than he has in the past as well and pick up more basketball referee gigs. He will finish out his current term as clerk in the Village of Onsted and might seek another one.
He also plans to make trips to Arizona to see his daughters and their families. He has one granddaughter in Phoenix.
Wright is originally from Onsted but moved when he was in eighth grade to Addison, where he graduated in 1985. He graduated from Adrian College in 1991 and spent a year teaching math at Pioneer North Central in Ohio before getting a job teaching at Morenci. He spent eight years there as a teacher, coach and later athletic director. He was the Morenci AD the last time the Bulldog football team played for the state title.
He left Morenci for Sand Creek, where he became athletic director for the Aggies in the late 1990s.
“We became a whole Creek family,” he said. “We moved into the district and spent several years there. When you build a home and your kids go there, it’s where our deepest roots are.”
After several years at Sand Creek, Wright moved to the Onsted district and then became superintendent of the Homer school district.
“What I felt was the perfect fit was not,” he said.
He retired after 16 months at Homer but couldn’t stay away from education long. He served as transportation director at Lenawee Christian for a year before the Sand Creek athletic director job opened again.
He felt the calling to come home.
“Sand Creek is a unique community, with a lot of caring people,” he said. “It is a great place.”
In all, Wright has spent 32 years in education, including time as a bus driver and drivers education teacher along the way. He got into officiating, which he’s now done for three decades as well.
Being an athletic director has its challenges, but he embraced those.
“I just love it,” he said. “There are long days, there are short days. There are good days and not so good days. I love the challenge of it all, making it work, changing schedules and seeing things work out.”
His last official event as Sand Creek athletic director was the Division 3 regional softball tournament last weekend. He will remain on duty for the rest of the month, helping the transition with new athletic director Steve Walters, the former Monroe Jefferson boys' basketball coach.
He also plans to remain a part of the TCC and assist during what appears to be a transition of sorts coming for the league. The league will have at least three new athletic directors next year and could see some major changes to the makeup of the league in the coming months.
“I’m not going anywhere, at least not yet,” he said. “I’ll stay active with the TCC and help out where I can. I want to stay a part of it.”
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: Wright to retire as Sand Creek AD this month
