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Orange athletics suffer two big sacks
(by Tony Lange - February 08, 2012)
Orange athletics suffer two big sacks
By TONY LANGE
The Orange High School athletic program took a double hit as school officials confirmed last week the shutdown of the girls varsity basketball team and the resignation of first-year Athletic Director Jeff Kurtz.
Following a 61-19 loss to West Geauga on Jan. 21, the girls basketball team had the last five games on its schedule canceled -- including this Saturday's game against Chagrin Falls -- because of a lack of participation, school communications coordinator Louis DeVincentis said.
He also confirmed that Kurtz had resigned. "The reason he gave was personal reasons," DeVincentis said. "There was nothing he did or didn't do on the job. There was nothing controversial with him. It was strictly he did it for personal reasons, and he asked that those reasons not be shared."
There will not be an interim athletic director, DeVincentis said. Orange High School Principal Paul Lucas and two other staff members will take on the athletic director duties until the beginning of next school year, he said.
Kurtz was hired Aug. 1, 2011, at Orange for an annual salary of $79,000 on a three-year contract. He replaced T.J. Rockwell, who now is athletic director at Perry High School, his alma mater.
While at Hudson in 2007, Kurtz was named the middle school athletic director of the year by the Northeast Ohio Interscholastic Administrators Association. After a failed levy at Hudson, however, his job was eliminated.
The athletic director's job at Orange High School came up in early summer of 2011.
"Knowing the history of the Orange School District -- it's an outstanding school district with great support -- that was something that made that job very attractive to me," Kurtz said last August. "I'm a lifelong resident of Northeast Ohio, and it was an opportunity to continue my career as an athletic director at an outstanding school district."
Kurtz said he was going to spend more time observing than making changes during his first year at Orange. "If it's not broke, we're not going to fix it," he said. "It will be just kind of observing and seeing how things are working and trying to do the best we can every day to make sure the kids have an outstanding opportunity to participate in interscholastic athletics."
While Kurtz's resignation and the conclusion of the girls basketball season happened at roughly the same time, they were unrelated, DeVincentis said.
"We were talking about that. That was totally coincidental," DeVincentis said. "Him resigning had nothing to do with the basketball team. It was just a coincidence that one happened right after the other. The main reason for the basketball team folding was just that we only had like a half a dozen girls on the team after injury and lack of participation."
Returning from a 4-16 varsity record from 2011, the Orange girls basketball program lacked numbers at the beginning of this season and had to shut down its junior varsity program. First-year head coach Despina Moraitou took over the varsity program.
Five seniors lost to graduation last year, a number of non-returners and injuries prevented the 1-14 Lady Lions from finishing this season.
"With that few number of girls and no depth on the team, they figured it would be better to shut it down and start over again next year," DeVincentis said. "Hopefully, we don't know. Maybe she'll come back as a coach again," he said or Moraitou.
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