Connor Ramey, right, is among the top returning athletes for Edinburgh in 2023-24.
Daily Journal file photo
Editor’s note: This is the sixth in a series taking stock of where each of Johnson County’s high school athletic departments stand heading into the 2023-24 school year. Today we take a look at Edinburgh, where new athletic director Luke Robertson is still getting his feet wet after taking over for David Walden this summer.
Outside of his job interview, Luke Robertson hadn’t spent any time in Edinburgh before taking over as the high school’s athletic director about three weeks ago. So one of the first items on his to-do list was to familiarize himself with his new community.
The best way to do that, it turns out, is to get to know those who actually make up that community. Fortunately for Robertson, there’s been no shortage of people willing to engage him in conversation.
“I’ve come to figure out in a short amount of time that the people here love athletics and they’re extremely supportive,” he said. “Being in that kind of environment for me is great, because I want to be somewhere where people want to buy in and support the athletic program. It gets busy when you have an environment like that, but it’s all for the good.”
“Busy” has been the operative word for Robertson as the assumes control of the Lancer athletic department, filling the void created by the retirement of longtime AD David Walden at the end of June. Robertson, who says Walden has been an invaluable sounding board so far, is hoping to build upon some of the school’s recent successes, such as a 20-win volleyball campaign last fall.
His role in that, he says, is providing the necessary support system for his coaches — and again, that comes down to communicating, which is why he made sure to meet with each of his fall coaches face to face as soon as he got started.
“It’s critical to get to sit down with all of these coaches and really get to know where they’re standing and what they need support with, things that have gone well so far and things that haven’t, what I can do to support them,” Robertson said. “That was my first priority — to get in and talk with these fall coaches and make sure that we have everything covered that we’re going to need to work on for this year.”
Filling out the coaching staff will be one of the next things that Robertson needs to work on. He came into July still in need of a cross country coach for the fall, and he also needs to hire a new boys basketball coach — possibly the most anticipated personnel decision he’ll make during his time in Edinburgh.
While there will be a lot of eyes on that hire, Robertson doesn’t view it as a career-defining one. He just tries to find coaches who share his vision and leaves it to them to make the imprint. He’s just the guy behind the curtain.
That said, he is “embracing the challenge” of finding the Lancers’ next leader.
Among the other challenges awaiting Robertson is navigating life at a rural Class A school. That can mean struggling to find enough bodies to fill out a team or enough money to fund everything on his coaches’ wish lists.
Robertson is hesitant to make any hard predictions about what Edinburgh’s future might look like until he’s had his feet on the ground for at least a year — but having seen life from the other side of the spectrum as the assistant AD at Class 4A Richmond, which routinely lost students to smaller schools in the area, he believes there is a potential upside to being the little guy.
“Once you create that really strong culture and people from other schools hear about it, you really start to build up your reputation and then that becomes an attractive point for people to want to come and play at your school,” Robertson said. “But for me, priority No. 1 is making sure we retain our kids here and give them the best opportunities — because we want to serve this community first.”
One way of doing that is to further enhance the game-day experience. The Lancers have a history of strong fan support in sports such as softball and boys basketball, and Robertson would like to see similar turnout across the board.
“We’re going to do whatever we can to make it as fun and engaging as possible at our games,” he said. “One of the things I love about being an AD is being able to go into a game-day atmosphere and just make it fun for everybody. Make it fun for our students, make it fun for our fans and try to get the community to just get out there and enjoy it.”
It might be fun for Robertson, too. It’ll definitely be busy.
“It might seem like there’s less to do (at a smaller school), but there’s always something to do,” he said. “Because when you’re trying to create a first-class athletic program, you’ve got to make sure you’re covering all of your bases and taking care of everybody.”
