Knapp looks forward to becoming Center Grove AD

<p>For old time’s sake, Scott Knapp and one of his first mentors might soon get the urge to grab lunch together at the Steak ’n Shake in Seymour.</p><p>Knapp, 42, who was officially approved as Center Grove’s next athletic director at a school board meeting last week, will be the one bellying up to the cash register afterward.</p><p>Or so insists Jerry Bomholt, who guided the start of Knapp’s administrative career.</p><p>“When I was the principal at Shawe Memorial and we went to all these meetings, that sucker never opened up his wallet one time,” laughed the 67-year-old Bomholt, who is now the boys basketball coach at Jay County. “Once he did, there were so many moths.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>“I’ll always remember that, but Scott was single then and not making a lot of money. Tell him I still have all the receipts from the meals he’s eaten.”</p><p>Knapp, in his eighth year as the Center Grove assistant AD, begins his new job July 1. His boss, Jon Zwitt, retires in June after serving as the school’s athletic director since the start of the 1996-97 school year.</p><p>The announcement of his promotion triggered equal amounts of relief and happiness within Knapp.</p><p>“It was both,” he said. “I’ve worked so hard to get to this point, and I’ve had great mentors along the way, starting with Jerry Bomholt and even Kip Staggs and obviously Jon. (Zwitt) has been instrumental in getting me to this point. Everywhere I’ve been I’ve tried to connect with people who have had success.”</p><p>A 2003 Ball State graduate, Knapp was hired by Bomholt to teach physical education and health at Shawe Memorial High School in Madison, down in the state’s southernmost reaches.</p><p>However, midway through the 2003-04 school year, fate intervened.</p><p>“It just so happened that we had a volunteer athletic director (Jim McKenna), and he was great,” Bomholt said. “But he had a stroke, and we needed someone to take over, and Scott took over.”</p><p>Despite it being his first year at Shawe, Knapp — who was only 24 at the time and had hoped to eventually coach one or more high school sports — thought it the natural move to add the role of athletic director.</p><p>Just like that, Knapp’s career aspirations changed.</p><p>After three years at Shawe, Knapp served one year as athletic director and dean of students at Southwestern (Hanover), located only eight miles from his first employer. He later served as Greencastle High School’s AD for four years before first entrenching his family in Johnson County, first with a two-year run as the assistant at Franklin under Staggs, now the athletic director at Martinsville.</p><p>Knapp has served in the same role at Center Grove since the 2013-14 school year. And though there were things to be learned, his previous administrative experiences helped make for a smooth transition.</p><p>“I had very little on-the-job training to do with Scott. He hit the ground running and has been progressing ever since,” Zwitt said. “Scott understands the pressures, the intensity and the expectation levels for Center Grove athletics well. He would rather hit an issue straight-on rather than sidestepping it.</p><p>“He provides positive direction for coaches, team members and for the parents of our student-athletes.”</p><p>Zwitt, though different from Knapp in some respects, has been the ideal template.</p><p>“Jon is very organized, but I’m very organized, and you have to be that in order to succeed and survive in this profession,” Knapp said. “Jon is just so regimented and is so territorial, if you will. He takes a lot of pride in doing things the right way and thinking of the students first.</p><p>“That’s why we’re in this profession. For the kids.”</p><p>Not surprisingly, Knapp has received numerous congratulatory emails, phone calls and text messages from friends and family members in the past couple of weeks. Less shocking is the fact that the at-times crotchety Bomholt, now in his 40th season as a basketball coach in Indiana, was among the first.</p><p>Bomholt and his wife, Dee Dee, are parents to three adult children, all close to Knapp’s age. The next Center Grove athletic director is, in some ways, the couple’s fourth. The coach ended his call to Knapp by reminding him who is paying for their next meal.</p><p>“More than anything, Scott Knapp can talk to the lowest guy in the community to the highest booster and make them feel good,” Bomholt said. “If you can’t do public relations, you’re not going to do very well at that job.</p><p>“I am happy for Scott. There are some people in your life that when something good happens to them, it feels like it happened to you. I love him.”</p>