If you’re looking for an image that will depict the plight of Maine high school athletic administrators these days, a revolving door does the trick.

Consider the circumstances that brought Patrick Westberry to Monmouth Academy, however, and a spinning globe is more exact.

Westberry returns to the region after 12 years as a teacher, coach and administrator at a secondary school of 1,400 students in Cambridge, New Zealand.

Taking the visual aid a step further, Westberry, a graduate of Livermore Falls High School and the University of Maine at Farmington, noted that he has come “full circle.” He did his student teaching while serving as a boys’ varsity assistant basketball coach at Monmouth in 1996-97.

“I had such a good impression of the school and the community then, and the kids in particular,” Westberry said. “I’d always hoped for a shot at coming back here, so I got my wish in the end. I’m very, very happy to be here.”

His transition is the longest and most non-traditional in a year of massive turnover in local athletic administrative offices.

Two other area ADs — Nick Gannon of Lisbon and Ryan Holmes of Leavitt — began their new job at those schools within the past month. Each is an administrator at the high school level for the first time.

Westberry’s appointment was approved Aug. 8 by the RSU 2 school board. He officially started work Monday.

At Monmouth, where the redefining of the AD’s role is typical in an era of cost containment, Westberry also will teach. The subject? Global studies, fittingly.

“That’s the same the world over. The AD work in New Zealand is pulled in all different directions, and there’s a huge turnover,” Westberry said. “That’s the first place schools look to cut funds. Maine ADs are in the same boat as others elsewhere.”

It’s nearly 24 hours of continuous travel to get from Monmouth to Cambridge by air, but Westberry maintained his strong connection to the close-knit community during his time away.

In his capacity as coach and sport coordinator at Cambridge, he supervised multiple world tours by the school’s basketball programs, two for the girls and two for the boys.

Monmouth hosted the Kiwi delegation on multiple occasions for a week of summer hoop and cultural exchange. The students also toured at least one major American city on each visit, including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“Each of those tours involved between 18 to 24 kids and four or five adults. They tended to raise in excess of $100,000 for those tours,” Westberry said. “They fund-raised all that and paid for some of it themselves and worked hard and appreciated it more. Partly because of those tours, we developed into one of the stronger basketball programs in New Zealand.”

In a year when many ADs are getting their feet wet in the job for the first time, Westberry brings home a wealth of experience. He oversaw 64 sports teams in 25 different “codes,” or sports, at Cambridge. More than half the students in the school participated in at least one sport.

His budget was a mere $10,000.

“It was all pay-to-play. All volunteer-based. We put into place some parent committees for some of the larger (sports),” Westberry said. “We had great participation, which is a lot like Monmouth. For a little school, there are good people involved here.”

Westberry also taught in the United Kingdom for a year before moving to his wife’s native New Zealand.

His daughter will be a junior this school year.

“A bit of missing home,” Westberry said of his reasons for returning to Maine. “New Zealand’s a great place. People talk about wanting to go there and with good reason, but it is a long, long ways away from Maine.”

Gannon, a native of Salem, Mass., takes over the position of assistant principal and co-curricular coordinator at Lisbon. He succeeds Zach Longyear, who held the job for two years before accepting a principal’s chair in the Skowhegan district.

Jeff Ramich also had a two-year stint at Leavitt before accepting the same post at Brunswick. That opened the door to Holmes, who had been a coach and teacher at his alma mater, Mt. Ararat.

In another recent move, Dirigo hired former Lewiston High School assistant principal Mike Hutchins to fill its assistant principal/AD vacancy. Hutchins replaced Steve Ouellette, who had been selected as successor to Chris Moreau. Ouellette then chose to stay at Gardiner after he was elevated from interim status to the Tigers’ full-time AD.

In the MVC alone, Gannon, Hutchins and Westberry join a list of no fewer than seven new ADs.

“That’s half the conference,” said Westberry, who will attend the league’s annual meeting of its athletic administrators next week. “It just suggests that it’s not an easy job, so people do it for the love of the job rather than career-oriented reasons and the money and all that.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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