High school athletic director to resign at end of school year

After 12 years working in Wrangell's schools, Trisa Rooney has decided to move on.

Rooney will resign from her position as activities director at the end of the school year, citing a need to take time for herself.

"The last couple of years have definitely taken a toll," she said. "It's just been so much. I can't pinpoint just one thing, it's not totally the COVID. It's just a rough couple years."

Rooney has been the activities director for about four years, she said, and has done something different since she started working at the elementary school in 2010. After four years there, she moved to the middle school to be the librarian, a job that was a perfect fit.

"That was my ideal job. I would have stayed there forever. I love books. I love to read," she said. "Honestly, I think if I would have stayed at the library instead of taking over this job, I probably would have still stayed because it's no stress."

The activities director position is not a 9-to-5 kind of job, and Rooney is looking forward to a relaxed schedule.

"It will just be nice to take a year and lay low ... and I'm not glued to my phone waiting for a coach to call me because something went wrong with their itinerary and the buss didn't pick them up and, 'Oh, hey, the other AD (athletic director) forgot to unlock the door, and we're standing out in the freezing cold," Rooney said with a laugh.

It's not an uncommon sight at school events to find her directing foot traffic, making sure people have tickets to events, athletes are where they're supposed to be, and even cleaning up spills in the gym to avert accidents. Rooney doesn't stop there.

"She does the AD job, but she also does an awful lot of other things," said Bob Davis, assistant principal of the high school and middle school. "She took over our testing protocols this year. She's done over 1,400 tests. We could not have kept everything going without that. That's not typically something the AD does."

Rooney often enlisted the help of her family, including daughter, Kayla, when organizing various school activities. So much so, that Kayla automatically knew where she needed to jump in to help her mother.

With her youngest child, Ryan, about to graduate high school, Rooney and her husband, wrestling head coach Jef Rooney, would like to travel more. The activities director position hampered that ability because there wasn't any time off during school holidays and not a lot of time between spring and fall sports programs, and the nicest times to be in Wrangell are in spring and summer, she said.

There aren't any plans to replace Rooney at the moment since the district is in the middle of budgeting for next school year. Davis said the position might not be filled at the moment, saying there were a myriad of ways the duties could be fulfilled. He said Rooney often filled in the gaps to get things done around the school when there wasn't anyone else to do it.

"I cannot express how glad and grateful I am for the job that she's done," Davis said.

Rooney said since staffing is so low at the schools, she anticipates stepping in to substitute when needed, but she looks forward to a more normal schedule.

"After the last two and a half years of craziness, I'm definitely ready to relax," she said.