White Plains High School Athletics Will Miss Chip Salvestrini
Current White Plains Athletic Director Chip Salvestrini is moving forward while the White Plains Athletic Department is going to be stuck in neutral without any leadership or direction unless some action is taken quickly. 
For those who didn’t see our paper’s cover story, Chip Salvestrini has been offered and accepted the position of the athletic director of Danbury High School. Salvestrini’s last day at White Plains will be June 30 and he will start at Danbury in late July. This is the same school that Salvestrini left to come to White Plains. The people who run the Danbury schools thought so highly of Salvestrini that they’re welcoming him back with open arms after he left there three years ago. It looks like he made a significant impact during his eight-year tenure there.
Salvestrini wasn’t offered tenure by White Plains this winter. Tenure is a very sensitive topic within the education system. There is no black and white textbook that lists all the things an administrator or teacher has to do to guarantee getting tenure. Tenure is a political issue where the Board of Education has all the power.
In his three years Salvestrini was a tireless worker. He arrived at work around 6 a.m. every day and left after 4 p.m. His door was always open to his coaches and physical education teachers. When the varsity coaches found out that Salvestrini wasn’t offered tenure and wouldn’t be returning next year the majority were devastated. Salvestrini is loved by his coaching staff and Salvestrini loves his coaches, which isn’t the case with all ADs. The bond between Salvestrini and the White Plains Coaching Staff is something that live on for a very long time. Both sides will dearly miss working with each other in the future.
Being an athletic director at a high school is a thankless job. It’s like being a manager of a water dam. You have to make sure you can fix the holes and problems when they arise so a flood doesn’t occur. Salvestrini’s phone constantly rings and e-mails come in that he has to deal with stat to make sure further problems don’t arise. Salvestrini is a no-nonsense man who is straight forward with everyone he meets. If there is a problem he will deal with it immediately instead of pushing it aside for another day.
As a member of the media, there are very few athletic directors who are as easy to deal with as Chip.
As I have written several times in prior columns, high school athletics is just another class that the school offers. High school sports coaches should always be teachers first and coaches and instructors of sports skills second. Believe it or not the student athletes will take many memories and lessons away from what they learned while playing on high school teams.
Danbury is very lucky to be getting the many wonderful talents and attributes that Salvestrini brings to the job with his many years of experience. I doubt who ever the district decides to hire will have a resume that would be as strong as its current athletic director.
While on the subject of the district hiring a new athletic director, I question why it has taken so long. The district decided not to give Salvestrini tenure a long time ago and there seemed to be no structured plan to find his replacement.
After having spent 13-plus years working in Corporate America before returning to the journalism industry last fall, I know a good company doesn’t let a big-time manager go without having a structured plan in place to tell the employees who worked for the person who has been let go that things are going to be okay and there is nothing to worry about.
In Salvestrini’s case it looked like they just wanted to get him out without regard to the staff, coaches and kids who have relied on him for the last three years. It’s not only Salvestrini that lost his job but the coaches and students lost the person who represents and fights for the rights of the athletic department.
Growing up in Westchester I always looked as White Plains High School as one the top athletic programs around. Now that I’m covering the school on a weekly basis I can see why the school has succeeded – because it has coaches who give up so much of their personal lives to teach and instruct the student athletes here at White Plains High School.
These coaches deserve to have someone watching their backs as well as Salvestrini has done for the last three years. The problems with there being no successor named is that we are less than two months to the start of the fall sports season.
If there was a new athletic director in place he or she could spend this time getting to know the school’s coaches and the student athletes, who will be returning for the 2012-2013 season before summer break. Also keep in mind that whenever a new athletic director is named he or she will probably bring in some of their own coaches and administrators, which probably means that some current coaches might lose their jobs in the near future, which be a real shame giving all the talented coaches already in place at White Plains.
Best wishes to a great individual in Chip Salvestrini as he returns home to Danbury. Hopefully White Plains can start filling the void left by Salvestrini’s departure as quickly as possible. He or she has some big shoes to fill in replacing Salvestrini.
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