Scott Hunt / Scott Hunt / shunt@chronicle-tribune.com
FAIRMOUNT — The Madison-Grant United School Corporation has turned to one of its own to lead M-G athletics into the future.
TJ Herniak, a 2008 M-G alum, was promoted to the position of athletic director after spending the past couple school years as an assistant AD to Ryan Plovick. Plovick submitted his resignation in the spring after spending the last 16 years as Madison-Grant’s athletic director and 21 years total at the school. He is now working in the Pendleton Heights school system.
Herniak’s journey to becoming an athletic director was along a road less traveled, and essentially started with Plovick as an intern in 2014. It also included a full semester of him working third-shift full time at Red Gold while he did his student teaching during the day at Elwood High School in the spring semester of 2016.
After he got his teaching license, Herniak started as a full-time substitute at M-G in the fall of 2016 before he was hired to be a teacher and coach in a variety of sports. Prior to becoming an assistant AD, he was the varsity track coach for a few years as well as a junior high coach.
“I knew after that first year, I’m in the right spot and this is what I want to do. I had some ups and downs … I slowly worked my way up to it,” Herniak said Thursday evening. “Having the past two years to be assistant AD, I’ve got to give a lot of thanks to Ben Mann and Steve Vore for giving me the opportunity to do that. If I wouldn’t have been the assistant AD the last two years I might have went somewhere else and tried to look for other AD jobs. Madison-Grant is home.
“It’s been a long journey, This was always my career goal, to sit in this seat and do this, at this school. I feel blessed to be here,” he added. “ … No matter how it turns out I just hope people know that I gave everything I had to this place and the kids that are here.”
Herniak understood what his duties would be prior to accepting athletic director position, but his first month on the job has also been a learning experience as well. He said his transition to the top spot in the athletic department has been aided by his familiarity with the school, staff and administration.
Much of what Herniak has learned in his first month is how operations behind the scenes are done, most of which involves relationship building with people inside and outside of the school.
“The relationships you have to build behind the scenes are with vendors, officials and other ADs. That’s been the biggest, eye-opening kind of thing,” Herniak said. “Every aspect of it is about relationships, anyways. Those behind the scenes relationships are the biggest thing that kind of initially shocked me in the first month, but I feel like I’m starting to settle.
“When I interned with Ryan in 2014, he gave me a glimpse into some of that stuff so I knew what to expect,” he continued. “The comfort, too, of knowing everybody I’m working with has been nice. I don’t feel as much pressure to figure it out as quick because I’ve got people around me that know me and that I know and can ask questions to.”
Aside from running the day-to-day operations of M-G’s current athletic department, Herniak said he’s started to develop a vision of what he wants Argyll sports to look like in the future. A big part of that vision is through the continued development of connections between high school sports and M-G’s youth leagues.
Herniak believes that his varsity coaches having a presence in youth development is an essential factor in helping build sustainability at the high school level.
“The youth league in Fairmount is starting to get back to what I remember it as a kid. It’s growing … I want our coaches to be involved,” Herniak said. “I look across the county for an example. Jeff Adamson (at Eastbrook) has kids in second and third grade running the same plays that they’re gonna run when they’re on the varsity squad. There’s a reason why he’s had success for 30-plus years and it’s because he’s built that program from his smallest kids all the way through high school. Kids know what to expect.
“We know that talent will ebb and flow, but we see the benefits from being involved with our youth programs. I want to be involved with our youth programs as much as I can be to capture kids when they’re young because that’s what we have to do,” he added. “If we don’t get them (involved) when they’re young, we won’t get them at all. That’s a point of emphasis for me.”
Another piece of Herniak’s vision is fostering the relationships between M-G sports and the community.
“I want people to be proud to be an Argyll I want kids to be proud to be an Argyll,” he said. “I want the community involved, stands packed at football, basketball and volleyball games. I want people to feel like when they come here they’re supporting the development of kids and not just an athletic team.
“My theme for this year for all of my coaches is ‘better everyday,’” Herniak added. “We’ve got to better every day. We don’t need to be 50 percent better or 25 percent better, just one-percent better. What did you do to make things better than when you showed up? That’s really our focus and we’ll continue to do that as long as I’m here.
“I’ll be honest, I want to be here for the next 25 or 30 years.”