You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 a.m.
97 5 fm.
I'm Alyssa Kay bringing you news in our community during this interview I'm talking with Lincoln High School principal Kelly's wacky and Lincoln High School athletic director Chris fight on Friday, July 24th, 2026 Thank you for joining me Kelly and Chris to bring the community an update from the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
It's great to have you here.
So
Well, I'm going to start the conversation with you, Kelly.
This is the first time we've met.
And you are the new principal at Lincoln High School.
Can you share with our listening audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and what brought you here?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I've actually been an associate principal at Lincoln High School for the last seven years.
I grew up in a small town about a half an hour southeast of Appleton called Stockbridge.
I started, I did my bachelors at UWSP.
I then, in Family Consumer Ed, where I then taught at Mosini and at Spash, I received my master's from UW Oshkosh and have been at Lincoln since 2019.
Okay,
so you're very familiar with the area.
I am.
It's actually a new venture for you.
You're just moving up the ladder.
Yeah, I've lived in Central Wisconsin, the point area since 2002.
Okay.
So I currently live with my husband, Dave.
We have two boys, Ethan, who is 19, who is a traveling welder, and Zach, who is 10, who's going to be a fifth grader this year.
Oh, wow, traveling welder.
That's got to be some
interesting stories
coming back to you.
It is definitely interesting for sure.
Does he do like scary stuff, like climb up on high things and...
A little bit.
He right now is kind of working in some factories.
He's done a little bit of traveling to Michigan and Indiana, and it will soon be traveling to Texas.
Wow.
Yeah.
So for you, was being a high school principal
always a goal for you?
I don't think so.
I think actually I'm probably more of a, you know, take the opportunities as they come and see where life leads you type of individual.
So I actually while I was in high school earned my cosmetology degree.
High school was not always my favorite place to be.
So my mom and my school counselor at the time.
worked together to find me an opportunity to be able to get my cosmetology license while I was still in high school.
So
just kind of took advantage of that opportunity that helped pay my way through college.
I was just gonna
ask.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's just been a great opportunity.
more or less believing in the people around me that saw my potential and taking advantage of the opportunities that came.
So it's worked out pretty well.
So you've been in this new position for less than a month.
I have.
How are you finding the transition?
Good.
I think it's very helpful that I have been a part of the school for the last seven years.
So for me, it's not learning the people or learning the building.
It's, you know, refining some of the wonderful processes that we have.
How can we fine tune some of our current existing policies and practices is more or less the goal of our admin team this year.
Okay.
And are there other new people on the admin team?
There actually is not.
We actually reduced our admin team by one person.
So they are not, the school district chose not to fill my position.
And so the two other associate principals, Ashley Testimer and Jack Smalley, they will be our two APs where we usually head three.
Okay, so
a
little bit more of a attrition type situation.
Yeah, we're more
duties, doing more
with less as schools are so often asked to do.
Absolutely, and we're trying to be very cognitive of that and just making sure that we're doing what we can, working the extra, doing the extra things to make sure that we can support our community and students as best as we can.
Okay well being we're here in the thick of summer you're getting ready to you're already I'm sure well into the planning for back to school.
We are.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
Yeah so this year for some of our hopes for back to school for our school is that we want to you know continue to focus on non-compliant behaviors and attendance getting to students to class on time.
Last year we made excellent strides in reducing behaviors by over 50% in the building.
along with reducing tardies for our students by 30%, students were attending more days of school.
How many minutes do you have in passing
time?
Seven.
Which is plenty.
That is plenty.
It is plenty.
I think we had four.
Yeah, it is plenty.
Lincoln is a pretty big building.
It is.
But if you're focused and you're determined to where you need to be, you can easily get there on time.
Yes.
And a bathroom park.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So we do have some back to school schedule pick-up dates.
August 19th from 2.30 to 7.
August 20th from 11 until 4.
August 25th from 2.30 until 7.
On that August 19th date at 4.30 to 5.30 in the pack we're going to have a parent meeting for new students or incoming freshmen.
Incoming freshmen and those new students will actually have a, we started last year with a new student and freshman only first day.
So the rest of the student body didn't come on the actual first day of the school year.
We dedicated it to those freshmen and new students so they can get acclimated with the building.
They can learn routines, meet some of their teachers, learn where their classes are.
With the fourth of the amount of population there.
Absolutely.
Which makes a world of difference.
great.
Our teachers got to, you know, really get to know some of the kids that they're going to be working with.
And those students then really felt comfortable.
The lunch line can be a really daunting space when there's, you know, hundreds of kids trying to get through and most of them, three quarters of them already know what they're doing.
So just making sure that they know, you know, how to navigate that, how did how to get their lunch, where the bathrooms are, how to open their lockers, how all those simple things
reduce
so much stress for those.
Absolutely.
So that's our big goal of that day on September 1st.
And then the rest of our student body, we will welcome everybody on September 2nd.
OK.
Yeah.
And let's go over those parent date, those meeting dates again for the incoming new students and freshmen.
For sure.
So schedule pickups, that's where.
You'll come, you'll pay your booking material fees.
If you want to buy parking passes, they'll pick up their schedules, get their school pictures taken.
You know, all those nuts and bolts of getting yourself set for the school year, they can go put stuff in their locker, check old classes, walk around the building.
So the schedule pickups, again, are August 19th, 237, August 20th, 11 to 4, August 25th.
230 to 7 again with that new student and freshman meeting in the pack.
It's not required that you attend.
going to be a video that gets put out that you can gather all of that information to.
But if you want to attend the in-person option, you can.
That's on August 19th from 4.30 to 5.30.
As a reminder, before you attend, there is that online verification stuff that parents need to complete for their students.
So just making sure that you're getting all of that stuff done in Skyward.
And is that parent square?
In Skyward.
In Skyward.
OK.
And then where do they sign
up for notifications then through Skyward?
Through Parents Square and they will, in our back to school newsletter, we will have QR codes and stuff that they can get all of those apps downloaded.
Wonderful.
Absolutely.
So let's talk now a little bit about some of the focuses for this year.
One
of the
biggest changes is that students are not going to be allowed to have any personal communication devices in the classroom, correct?
Correct.
So in accordance with state law, personal communication devices, including cell phones and smartwatches are no longer permitted in educational environments.
So students will be required to keep those devices in their lockers during the school day.
They may access them during their passing time.
during lunches, before and after school, but they need to keep them in their lockers and they will not be welcome in those classroom spaces at any capacity.
And that is just a blanket
rule.
It is a blanket rule.
Which
should
simplify things.
Yes.
Yes.
I hope.
I hope.
That's always the goal,
right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the other big changes that we're making is during first and second hour, we have some built-in intervention time in the building.
Students...
Previously could go to any teacher that they needed to get additional supports and help maybe retake tests You know ask questions.
Maybe it's that Lincoln launch.
No, this is radar pride time or our PT time.
Okay, so That time it was great.
It is great.
However, we needed to fine-tune so again our theme of making sure we're fine-tuning and
really utilizing the time and the resources that we have to the best of our abilities.
So that rate of pride time has now been restructured to provide purposeful academic supports and reteaching for students who have not quite mastered those learning objectives, standards, or essential skills.
Because we believe that all students can achieve at high levels.
So we're going to make sure that we are dedicating that time very specifically to that.
So teachers are now going to request very
specific students.
Students will then go to those specific teachers.
The whole school will have a designated spot that they need to go to.
hopefully creating less wandering or less, you know, just hanging out in spaces and chat time.
We believe social interactions are super important, but so is making sure that we're achieving at those high levels.
Focusing on those academic skills that are maybe just a little bit shy
of
where they need to be.
Absolutely.
That's our goal.
All right.
Are there any other changes and initiatives that
you want to touch on?
I think for the most part,
We, the only other new big thing that's going to be coming up in the next month or so is we were very fortunate to have a generous donation to have the UW marching band come.
They're going to be playing.
This will be a great segue into Mr. Fight here.
The UW marching band is going to be at Lincoln High School on Southwood County Stadium Field on September 25th.
Oh wow.
The whole band will be coming, they'll be doing the run-on, they'll be doing pre-game stuff, they'll be doing part of the halftime show, and then they're going to stay and do the fifth quarter and do an extra performance for fans.
Oh cool.
Yeah,
so tickets will soon be available to purchase.
We're working out some fine details before we put all that out there, but it's going to be awesome.
Wonderful.
Well, that is a great segue into Mr. Fight, and we'll just take a brief pause here to hear from our sponsors.
I'm Melissa Kay talking with Lincoln High School principal Kelly Zwecki, and soon with athletic director Chris Fight.
And you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.
975 FM WFHR.
Welcome, you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Melissa Kay bringing you news in our community.
I've been speaking with Lincoln High School Principal Kelly Swacky and Lincoln High School Athletic Director Chris Fight of the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
And where we left off, I was speaking with Kelly about some of the incoming things for the new school year, some of the changes.
And one of the exciting things coming is you said the UW marching band.
So now Chris, we're going to transition over to you.
If you could just briefly introduce yourself to the audience and tell us about being athletic director at Lincoln High School.
Yeah, this is my sub.
I'll be starting my seventh year as a Lincoln High School Athletic Director.
Originally, I have actually a criminal justice degree back when I graduated from high school.
It took me a little while to get into education, but now I've been at...
Wisconsin Rapids for the last 20 plus years in education and I've been an athletic director in the district for 11 years now I was four years at the middle school prior to the seven years now at Lincoln High School
Okay, so seven years you've really gotten a lot of time to get things going and implement things that you would like How excited are you about the UW marching band coming?
Oh, it's gonna be awesome.
You know, obviously it adds one more dimension to a Friday night, which is gonna be awesome.
It's our
We're playing Eau Claire Memorial that night and actually assumption plays right before us on the same field.
So it's going to be a very busy night with a lot of activities going on at the venue.
Absolutely.
Well, this is, uh, we're just in the weeks before the school year starts here at the end of summer.
And these have to be important weeks for, for student athletes and for the athletic department as a whole.
Let's, let's talk about what's going on.
Yeah, absolutely.
Obviously within the next couple of weeks, we have football starting here coming up in August 4th already.
So obviously one thing has changed over the last two years now that coaches have been able to have more contact with kids throughout the summer So they've had a lot more engagement with kids.
There's only one week that they are required to be basically have no contact but obviously now with the way that's changed that we've had a lot more Activity with our student athletes, which I think it's been a good change, but obviously you also want to give them balance of you know, so that's
That's a very new thing to our coaches, which, you know, we're still working through.
But obviously, like I said, we have football starting August 4th.
Girls golf, girls tennis start the 10th of August.
Girls swimming starts on the 11th, which is kind of an oddball there, but does start on a Tuesday.
And then girls volleyball and boys and girls cross country and boys soccer starting the 17th.
So yes, there's a lot going on.
And with all the sports starting, obviously, it's a great time to remind student athletes and parents to make sure that student athletes have their physicals and all their online forms done prior to the season starting soon.
We're excited to get all that going
are those online forms available through the website through skyward
online forms will be available and parent square and so they'll be sent out and they'll be
available there.
The physicals obviously have to take care of through a doctor and we've had a lot of opportunities to get some free physicals throughout the community.
It's been very gracious and some of the clinics in town have provided those so that's awesome and hopefully that has helped us jumpstart this fall season.
And that was a lot of different sports that you mentioned.
How many coaches do you have?
Well, throughout the year, we actually hire close to 100 different coaches.
It's a lot.
I would say every sport is different because of the nature of the sport.
Some of the smaller sports, you might only have one or two coaches.
A sport like football, it could be up to close to 10 coaches because obviously there's various different levels and a lot of those sports.
So it varies.
sports per season obviously we want to have enough coaches there to kind of balance out how many athletes we have so some of it's dependent on how many athletes show up to play and each season we have probably close to 300 athletes involved in our athletic programs which is great so obviously you know we
continually looking for coaches.
So if anyone's ever interested, they can always contact us if they have interested me a part of that.
You read my mind.
I was going to ask you, are there a lot of returning coaches?
Are they all from this area?
Where do you find coaches?
Well, that is an interesting, you could say, problem situation.
Sometimes it's hard.
We've had a lot of
coaches retire after being there a long time in the last few years and we've had multiple coaches with 20 plus years of experience.
We've had a lot of transition and we've been able to fill those in which we have some very sometimes young and sometimes inexperienced but obviously it's a process and we're trying to we obviously post positions online to try to get
individuals that are interested to apply for those and we do our best to train them and obviously hopefully they come in with some knowledge that will obviously give our kids a great experience.
And are these like a paid position for a coach?
Yes, most of them are paid.
We do have volunteers that also help out.
So like if somebody wants to volunteer, we're always willing to open our doors to those people and obviously we just go through some onboarding things with them and making sure that.
Is
that like a mentorship type program?
Yeah, we do and we obviously work with them.
Sometimes we put coaches with them that kind of
help them through the process.
Okay, do you ever work with like UW's Stevens Point to see if there's people going through their athletic program there that'd be interesting?
Yeah, we've reached out to them and we occasionally will get some of the students that are over there.
It's a little challenging with their class schedule sometimes and being consistently available, but we do occasionally get a few from there.
A lot of those individuals end up over them.
point school district because it's a lot easier with just a little bit of a travel difference that does create it but every once in a while we actually get a lot of our some of our officials not a lot but some of our officials from student students that are at UWSP which is great then that also helps which is you know it's becoming more of an issue in high school athletics with finding officials
hmm I suppose which is also another paid position just
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, those are paid positions also and obviously they're all very important part of what we need here for high school
athletics.
Well, you got to have somebody follow in the rules, right?
Yeah, that's part of the game.
I
don't claim to know a whole lot about sports because I don't watch them.
I did play them when I was younger, not officially, but sports are, I think, very, very important for students in learning.
teamwork and how to solve problem-solve together and talk for a little bit about some of the benefits of being in school athletics.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, a lot of times you talk about athletics, you think about the physical aspect of it, but, you know, we really talk to our coaches about building relationships and that's...
probably one of the main things that you'll hear coming out my mouth and obviously the coaches relate to them is that you know this is about having relationships with student athletes and building rapport that helps them become a better person as they leave high school.
You know obviously everybody wants to be a state champion but that's just not realistic for every person and you know that there's a
a process that they go through that we want to help them become better people and developing responsibility and consistency and trying to find ways to motivate themselves and finding the thing that drives them is very important.
We talked to our coaches about trying to give our student athletes the skills to be successful once they leave our programs.
Because a lot of that, I mean, teamwork in itself, knowing that other people are relying on you to be able to accomplish this goal together, those are great just life.
goal experiences to implement in other parts of your life?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think there's a lot of students that, you know, they use high school athletics to
help them in the classroom and you know there's a we call our student student athletes for a reason because it's all an extension of the classroom and we want obviously those same messages being relayed in the classroom that show up on the field or you know a plain area.
Well now let's shift for a little bit and talk about some of the state tournaments that are hosted at Lincoln High School.
Yeah absolutely you know I think one of the things we always talk about is when our programs also is trying to connect to the community I think one thing that we do as a program is we host
two of the state finals championships here at Lincoln High School.
Obviously our state cross country tournament that has been here since 1988, which has been a long time.
We did have one year that we were not able to host it because of COVID in 2020, but you know, every year since then, you know, obviously the ridges has opened their doors and helped us host that.
So we're very thankful to them.
And obviously we just continue, you know, that that that
State final meet brings in close to 10,000 people into our community which
which is a big boon for the economic
Absolutely, and and you know we continue to find ways that obviously nothing's getting any cheaper So we got to continue to find ways you know to work with our community to obviously make this event because we think it's very important So that that state tournament this year is October 31st.
It's a great
If you haven't ever seen it, it is one of the most amazing things you'll get to watch when people run around ridges golf course tracking these athletes.
It's a very cool tournament.
And a lot of people will say it's one of the best tournaments that they've ever experienced.
We also post the.
On November 14th, we host the eight-player state finals for football.
Obviously, the way the transition with football right now is a lot of the numbers are dropping in schools, so a lot of these smaller schools are having a hard time having 11 players on the field at a time.
So there's an eight-player state championship, and we've been hosting that for the last five plus years.
And we continue to, again, host both of those tournaments here this fall.
Okay, wonderful.
Well, are there any other things that you want to let people and students know about coming up with athletes, athletics this year?
We do have an informational meeting, our cold meeting that is August 3rd this year at 7pm.
It's a great opportunity.
to meet the athletic department and some of the coaches and obviously we just go through what athletics is like at Lincoln High School and we encourage, you know, we like to have it mandatory for all freshmen to be there.
We encourage everyone to attend though because it's a great reminder for a lot of things that we cover and expect and just trying to build that community within our athletic program.
And is that for parents and students?
Yes, absolutely both parents and students are welcome and great to have them both there.
Wonderful.
Well, it's been a delight speaking with both of you today.
I'm Melissa Kay talking with Lincoln High School Principal Kelly Swecky and Lincoln High School Athletic Director Chris Fite with the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, Kelly and Chris.
Thanks for having
us.
Thank you.
And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 a.m.
97 5 fm.
I'm Alyssa Kay bringing you news in our community during this interview I'm talking with Lincoln High School principal Kelly's wacky and Lincoln High School athletic director Chris fight on Friday, July 24th, 2026 Thank you for joining me Kelly and Chris to bring the community an update from the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
It's great to have you here.
So
Well, I'm going to start the conversation with you, Kelly.
This is the first time we've met.
And you are the new principal at Lincoln High School.
Can you share with our listening audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and what brought you here?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I've actually been an associate principal at Lincoln High School for the last seven years.
I grew up in a small town about a half an hour southeast of Appleton called Stockbridge.
I started, I did my bachelors at UWSP.
I then, in Family Consumer Ed, where I then taught at Mosini and at Spash, I received my master's from UW Oshkosh and have been at Lincoln since 2019.
Okay,
so you're very familiar with the area.
I am.
It's actually a new venture for you.
You're just moving up the ladder.
Yeah, I've lived in Central Wisconsin, the point area since 2002.
Okay.
So I currently live with my husband, Dave.
We have two boys, Ethan, who is 19, who is a traveling welder, and Zach, who is 10, who's going to be a fifth grader this year.
Oh, wow, traveling welder.
That's got to be some
interesting stories
coming back to you.
It is definitely interesting for sure.
Does he do like scary stuff, like climb up on high things and...
A little bit.
He right now is kind of working in some factories.
He's done a little bit of traveling to Michigan and Indiana, and it will soon be traveling to Texas.
Wow.
Yeah.
So for you, was being a high school principal
always a goal for you?
I don't think so.
I think actually I'm probably more of a, you know, take the opportunities as they come and see where life leads you type of individual.
So I actually while I was in high school earned my cosmetology degree.
High school was not always my favorite place to be.
So my mom and my school counselor at the time.
worked together to find me an opportunity to be able to get my cosmetology license while I was still in high school.
So
just kind of took advantage of that opportunity that helped pay my way through college.
I was just gonna
ask.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's just been a great opportunity.
more or less believing in the people around me that saw my potential and taking advantage of the opportunities that came.
So it's worked out pretty well.
So you've been in this new position for less than a month.
I have.
How are you finding the transition?
Good.
I think it's very helpful that I have been a part of the school for the last seven years.
So for me, it's not learning the people or learning the building.
It's, you know, refining some of the wonderful processes that we have.
How can we fine tune some of our current existing policies and practices is more or less the goal of our admin team this year.
Okay.
And are there other new people on the admin team?
There actually is not.
We actually reduced our admin team by one person.
So they are not, the school district chose not to fill my position.
And so the two other associate principals, Ashley Testimer and Jack Smalley, they will be our two APs where we usually head three.
Okay, so
a
little bit more of a attrition type situation.
Yeah, we're more
duties, doing more
with less as schools are so often asked to do.
Absolutely, and we're trying to be very cognitive of that and just making sure that we're doing what we can, working the extra, doing the extra things to make sure that we can support our community and students as best as we can.
Okay well being we're here in the thick of summer you're getting ready to you're already I'm sure well into the planning for back to school.
We are.
Let's talk about that a little bit.
Yeah so this year for some of our hopes for back to school for our school is that we want to you know continue to focus on non-compliant behaviors and attendance getting to students to class on time.
Last year we made excellent strides in reducing behaviors by over 50% in the building.
along with reducing tardies for our students by 30%, students were attending more days of school.
How many minutes do you have in passing
time?
Seven.
Which is plenty.
That is plenty.
It is plenty.
I think we had four.
Yeah, it is plenty.
Lincoln is a pretty big building.
It is.
But if you're focused and you're determined to where you need to be, you can easily get there on time.
Yes.
And a bathroom park.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So we do have some back to school schedule pick-up dates.
August 19th from 2.30 to 7.
August 20th from 11 until 4.
August 25th from 2.30 until 7.
On that August 19th date at 4.30 to 5.30 in the pack we're going to have a parent meeting for new students or incoming freshmen.
Incoming freshmen and those new students will actually have a, we started last year with a new student and freshman only first day.
So the rest of the student body didn't come on the actual first day of the school year.
We dedicated it to those freshmen and new students so they can get acclimated with the building.
They can learn routines, meet some of their teachers, learn where their classes are.
With the fourth of the amount of population there.
Absolutely.
Which makes a world of difference.
great.
Our teachers got to, you know, really get to know some of the kids that they're going to be working with.
And those students then really felt comfortable.
The lunch line can be a really daunting space when there's, you know, hundreds of kids trying to get through and most of them, three quarters of them already know what they're doing.
So just making sure that they know, you know, how to navigate that, how did how to get their lunch, where the bathrooms are, how to open their lockers, how all those simple things
reduce
so much stress for those.
Absolutely.
So that's our big goal of that day on September 1st.
And then the rest of our student body, we will welcome everybody on September 2nd.
OK.
Yeah.
And let's go over those parent date, those meeting dates again for the incoming new students and freshmen.
For sure.
So schedule pickups, that's where.
You'll come, you'll pay your booking material fees.
If you want to buy parking passes, they'll pick up their schedules, get their school pictures taken.
You know, all those nuts and bolts of getting yourself set for the school year, they can go put stuff in their locker, check old classes, walk around the building.
So the schedule pickups, again, are August 19th, 237, August 20th, 11 to 4, August 25th.
230 to 7 again with that new student and freshman meeting in the pack.
It's not required that you attend.
going to be a video that gets put out that you can gather all of that information to.
But if you want to attend the in-person option, you can.
That's on August 19th from 4.30 to 5.30.
As a reminder, before you attend, there is that online verification stuff that parents need to complete for their students.
So just making sure that you're getting all of that stuff done in Skyward.
And is that parent square?
In Skyward.
In Skyward.
OK.
And then where do they sign
up for notifications then through Skyward?
Through Parents Square and they will, in our back to school newsletter, we will have QR codes and stuff that they can get all of those apps downloaded.
Wonderful.
Absolutely.
So let's talk now a little bit about some of the focuses for this year.
One
of the
biggest changes is that students are not going to be allowed to have any personal communication devices in the classroom, correct?
Correct.
So in accordance with state law, personal communication devices, including cell phones and smartwatches are no longer permitted in educational environments.
So students will be required to keep those devices in their lockers during the school day.
They may access them during their passing time.
during lunches, before and after school, but they need to keep them in their lockers and they will not be welcome in those classroom spaces at any capacity.
And that is just a blanket
rule.
It is a blanket rule.
Which
should
simplify things.
Yes.
Yes.
I hope.
I hope.
That's always the goal,
right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the other big changes that we're making is during first and second hour, we have some built-in intervention time in the building.
Students...
Previously could go to any teacher that they needed to get additional supports and help maybe retake tests You know ask questions.
Maybe it's that Lincoln launch.
No, this is radar pride time or our PT time.
Okay, so That time it was great.
It is great.
However, we needed to fine-tune so again our theme of making sure we're fine-tuning and
really utilizing the time and the resources that we have to the best of our abilities.
So that rate of pride time has now been restructured to provide purposeful academic supports and reteaching for students who have not quite mastered those learning objectives, standards, or essential skills.
Because we believe that all students can achieve at high levels.
So we're going to make sure that we are dedicating that time very specifically to that.
So teachers are now going to request very
specific students.
Students will then go to those specific teachers.
The whole school will have a designated spot that they need to go to.
hopefully creating less wandering or less, you know, just hanging out in spaces and chat time.
We believe social interactions are super important, but so is making sure that we're achieving at those high levels.
Focusing on those academic skills that are maybe just a little bit shy
of
where they need to be.
Absolutely.
That's our goal.
All right.
Are there any other changes and initiatives that
you want to touch on?
I think for the most part,
We, the only other new big thing that's going to be coming up in the next month or so is we were very fortunate to have a generous donation to have the UW marching band come.
They're going to be playing.
This will be a great segue into Mr. Fight here.
The UW marching band is going to be at Lincoln High School on Southwood County Stadium Field on September 25th.
Oh wow.
The whole band will be coming, they'll be doing the run-on, they'll be doing pre-game stuff, they'll be doing part of the halftime show, and then they're going to stay and do the fifth quarter and do an extra performance for fans.
Oh cool.
Yeah,
so tickets will soon be available to purchase.
We're working out some fine details before we put all that out there, but it's going to be awesome.
Wonderful.
Well, that is a great segue into Mr. Fight, and we'll just take a brief pause here to hear from our sponsors.
I'm Melissa Kay talking with Lincoln High School principal Kelly Zwecki, and soon with athletic director Chris Fight.
And you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.
975 FM WFHR.
Welcome, you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Melissa Kay bringing you news in our community.
I've been speaking with Lincoln High School Principal Kelly Swacky and Lincoln High School Athletic Director Chris Fight of the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
And where we left off, I was speaking with Kelly about some of the incoming things for the new school year, some of the changes.
And one of the exciting things coming is you said the UW marching band.
So now Chris, we're going to transition over to you.
If you could just briefly introduce yourself to the audience and tell us about being athletic director at Lincoln High School.
Yeah, this is my sub.
I'll be starting my seventh year as a Lincoln High School Athletic Director.
Originally, I have actually a criminal justice degree back when I graduated from high school.
It took me a little while to get into education, but now I've been at...
Wisconsin Rapids for the last 20 plus years in education and I've been an athletic director in the district for 11 years now I was four years at the middle school prior to the seven years now at Lincoln High School
Okay, so seven years you've really gotten a lot of time to get things going and implement things that you would like How excited are you about the UW marching band coming?
Oh, it's gonna be awesome.
You know, obviously it adds one more dimension to a Friday night, which is gonna be awesome.
It's our
We're playing Eau Claire Memorial that night and actually assumption plays right before us on the same field.
So it's going to be a very busy night with a lot of activities going on at the venue.
Absolutely.
Well, this is, uh, we're just in the weeks before the school year starts here at the end of summer.
And these have to be important weeks for, for student athletes and for the athletic department as a whole.
Let's, let's talk about what's going on.
Yeah, absolutely.
Obviously within the next couple of weeks, we have football starting here coming up in August 4th already.
So obviously one thing has changed over the last two years now that coaches have been able to have more contact with kids throughout the summer So they've had a lot more engagement with kids.
There's only one week that they are required to be basically have no contact but obviously now with the way that's changed that we've had a lot more Activity with our student athletes, which I think it's been a good change, but obviously you also want to give them balance of you know, so that's
That's a very new thing to our coaches, which, you know, we're still working through.
But obviously, like I said, we have football starting August 4th.
Girls golf, girls tennis start the 10th of August.
Girls swimming starts on the 11th, which is kind of an oddball there, but does start on a Tuesday.
And then girls volleyball and boys and girls cross country and boys soccer starting the 17th.
So yes, there's a lot going on.
And with all the sports starting, obviously, it's a great time to remind student athletes and parents to make sure that student athletes have their physicals and all their online forms done prior to the season starting soon.
We're excited to get all that going
are those online forms available through the website through skyward
online forms will be available and parent square and so they'll be sent out and they'll be
available there.
The physicals obviously have to take care of through a doctor and we've had a lot of opportunities to get some free physicals throughout the community.
It's been very gracious and some of the clinics in town have provided those so that's awesome and hopefully that has helped us jumpstart this fall season.
And that was a lot of different sports that you mentioned.
How many coaches do you have?
Well, throughout the year, we actually hire close to 100 different coaches.
It's a lot.
I would say every sport is different because of the nature of the sport.
Some of the smaller sports, you might only have one or two coaches.
A sport like football, it could be up to close to 10 coaches because obviously there's various different levels and a lot of those sports.
So it varies.
sports per season obviously we want to have enough coaches there to kind of balance out how many athletes we have so some of it's dependent on how many athletes show up to play and each season we have probably close to 300 athletes involved in our athletic programs which is great so obviously you know we
continually looking for coaches.
So if anyone's ever interested, they can always contact us if they have interested me a part of that.
You read my mind.
I was going to ask you, are there a lot of returning coaches?
Are they all from this area?
Where do you find coaches?
Well, that is an interesting, you could say, problem situation.
Sometimes it's hard.
We've had a lot of
coaches retire after being there a long time in the last few years and we've had multiple coaches with 20 plus years of experience.
We've had a lot of transition and we've been able to fill those in which we have some very sometimes young and sometimes inexperienced but obviously it's a process and we're trying to we obviously post positions online to try to get
individuals that are interested to apply for those and we do our best to train them and obviously hopefully they come in with some knowledge that will obviously give our kids a great experience.
And are these like a paid position for a coach?
Yes, most of them are paid.
We do have volunteers that also help out.
So like if somebody wants to volunteer, we're always willing to open our doors to those people and obviously we just go through some onboarding things with them and making sure that.
Is
that like a mentorship type program?
Yeah, we do and we obviously work with them.
Sometimes we put coaches with them that kind of
help them through the process.
Okay, do you ever work with like UW's Stevens Point to see if there's people going through their athletic program there that'd be interesting?
Yeah, we've reached out to them and we occasionally will get some of the students that are over there.
It's a little challenging with their class schedule sometimes and being consistently available, but we do occasionally get a few from there.
A lot of those individuals end up over them.
point school district because it's a lot easier with just a little bit of a travel difference that does create it but every once in a while we actually get a lot of our some of our officials not a lot but some of our officials from student students that are at UWSP which is great then that also helps which is you know it's becoming more of an issue in high school athletics with finding officials
hmm I suppose which is also another paid position just
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, those are paid positions also and obviously they're all very important part of what we need here for high school
athletics.
Well, you got to have somebody follow in the rules, right?
Yeah, that's part of the game.
I
don't claim to know a whole lot about sports because I don't watch them.
I did play them when I was younger, not officially, but sports are, I think, very, very important for students in learning.
teamwork and how to solve problem-solve together and talk for a little bit about some of the benefits of being in school athletics.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, a lot of times you talk about athletics, you think about the physical aspect of it, but, you know, we really talk to our coaches about building relationships and that's...
probably one of the main things that you'll hear coming out my mouth and obviously the coaches relate to them is that you know this is about having relationships with student athletes and building rapport that helps them become a better person as they leave high school.
You know obviously everybody wants to be a state champion but that's just not realistic for every person and you know that there's a
a process that they go through that we want to help them become better people and developing responsibility and consistency and trying to find ways to motivate themselves and finding the thing that drives them is very important.
We talked to our coaches about trying to give our student athletes the skills to be successful once they leave our programs.
Because a lot of that, I mean, teamwork in itself, knowing that other people are relying on you to be able to accomplish this goal together, those are great just life.
goal experiences to implement in other parts of your life?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think there's a lot of students that, you know, they use high school athletics to
help them in the classroom and you know there's a we call our student student athletes for a reason because it's all an extension of the classroom and we want obviously those same messages being relayed in the classroom that show up on the field or you know a plain area.
Well now let's shift for a little bit and talk about some of the state tournaments that are hosted at Lincoln High School.
Yeah absolutely you know I think one of the things we always talk about is when our programs also is trying to connect to the community I think one thing that we do as a program is we host
two of the state finals championships here at Lincoln High School.
Obviously our state cross country tournament that has been here since 1988, which has been a long time.
We did have one year that we were not able to host it because of COVID in 2020, but you know, every year since then, you know, obviously the ridges has opened their doors and helped us host that.
So we're very thankful to them.
And obviously we just continue, you know, that that that
State final meet brings in close to 10,000 people into our community which
which is a big boon for the economic
Absolutely, and and you know we continue to find ways that obviously nothing's getting any cheaper So we got to continue to find ways you know to work with our community to obviously make this event because we think it's very important So that that state tournament this year is October 31st.
It's a great
If you haven't ever seen it, it is one of the most amazing things you'll get to watch when people run around ridges golf course tracking these athletes.
It's a very cool tournament.
And a lot of people will say it's one of the best tournaments that they've ever experienced.
We also post the.
On November 14th, we host the eight-player state finals for football.
Obviously, the way the transition with football right now is a lot of the numbers are dropping in schools, so a lot of these smaller schools are having a hard time having 11 players on the field at a time.
So there's an eight-player state championship, and we've been hosting that for the last five plus years.
And we continue to, again, host both of those tournaments here this fall.
Okay, wonderful.
Well, are there any other things that you want to let people and students know about coming up with athletes, athletics this year?
We do have an informational meeting, our cold meeting that is August 3rd this year at 7pm.
It's a great opportunity.
to meet the athletic department and some of the coaches and obviously we just go through what athletics is like at Lincoln High School and we encourage, you know, we like to have it mandatory for all freshmen to be there.
We encourage everyone to attend though because it's a great reminder for a lot of things that we cover and expect and just trying to build that community within our athletic program.
And is that for parents and students?
Yes, absolutely both parents and students are welcome and great to have them both there.
Wonderful.
Well, it's been a delight speaking with both of you today.
I'm Melissa Kay talking with Lincoln High School Principal Kelly Swecky and Lincoln High School Athletic Director Chris Fite with the Wisconsin Rapids Public School District.
Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, Kelly and Chris.
Thanks for having
us.
Thank you.
And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
