Life has a funny way of dropping hints.
Last fall, Shon Cottle was in Indianapolis visiting with family and friends, and he wound up at a Bethesda Christian soccer game. The Patriots’ opponent that day was Greenwood Christian; at the time, the Cougars were an afterthought, if that.
Fast forward roughly eight months, and Cottle is in the process of settling in as GCA’s new athletic director. Go figure.
The relationship came together somewhat serendipitously. Cottle’s wife, Melissa, excited about the prospect of becoming a grandparent, retired from her longtime job in Michigan and cast her eye southward since one of their daughters now lives in the Indy area. Melissa accepted a job in Greenwood and has been here since the start of the year.
Shon, meanwhile, is still working in Michigan as the athletic director and assistant principal at NorthPointe Christian in Grand Rapids, roles he has held for the last four years. His youngest daughter is a graduating senior at the school.
Cottle’s winter hunt for a new job in Indiana brought a slightly familiar name into the picture.
“As I started looking for jobs, I went onto Indeed,” he recalled, “and the very first thing that came up was an AD job at Greenwood Christian Academy.”
Cottle, Greenwood Christian’s fourth AD in the last five years, was formally introduced on April 30. He succeeds Devin Gray, who stepped down earlier this year.
He’s splitting time between NorthPointe Christian and GCA until Memorial Day weekend, when he’ll transition into a full-time role with the Cougars.
Having never lived outside of Michigan — he grew up on the state’s Upper Peninsula, earned a bachelor’s degree at Grand Valley State and got a master’s from Western Michigan — Cottle expects a bit of a learning curve, but he’s also coming in with a very clear vision of what he expects Greenwood Christian athletics to be.
“I’m a public school product myself, so it’s not a ‘Christian school is better than other people,’” Cottle said, “but I think that there’s an expectation from the public perspective and internally that, when you’re wearing ‘Christian’ across your chest, you are representing something bigger than yourself, and you need to do that in a way that’s positive.”
When asked about GCA’s past history of alleged and reported IHSAA rules infractions, some of which had landed the school on probation, and whether he might be better equipped to handle compliance thanks to his experience working within Michigan High School Athletic Association bylaws at NorthPointe, Cottle said the topic wasn’t explicitly broached during the interview process — but he stands by his principles.
He noted that he once fired a tennis coach at NorthPointe Christian right after a highly successful season because of some ethical questions, and he plans to bring a similar “two-strike policy” to Johnson County.
“I’ll tell you flat out, I want to win as much as anybody,” he said, “but I want to win right and I want to win with integrity. So we’re going to do things the right way. … We need to be far from the gray area.”
Cottle may be venturing into unfamiliar territory here in central Indiana, but he seems confident that his moral compass will serve him well here.
