St. Cloud High School athletics saw a major shakeup this week, with veteran Athletics Director Eric Godfrey stepping down and being replaced by head football Coach Bryan Smart on June 1.
Godfrey, who has been at the school since 2008 and has served as AD for the last six years stepped down to accept a new leadership role at the school.
“Our principal Nate Fancher approached me several weeks ago and wanted to know if I was interested in this new position,” Godfrey said. “There were a ton of different factors I had to consider but the opportunity to face some new challenges in my career was the deciding factor.”
The school posted the AD job and interviewed candidates this week before deciding on Smart as the replacement.
“I was pretty shocked when Eric announced he was moving on from the AD post. He had been a great athletic director and valuable resource and friend for all our coaches and student athletes,” Smart said. “It was not an easy decision to apply for the job, because I love coaching football. But I also came to the decision that it was a good time to move on. I have young son and this will give me an opportunity to become more involved in coaching him in youth sports, but the main thing was this move presents an opportunity for me to leave a mark on our entire athletic program.”
Godfrey served on the selection committee for Athletic Director and said Smart was both the logical and correct choice.
“We had some really good candidates, but what made Bryan stand out was his ideas for strengthening the overall athletic program and incredible passion he feels for our school. The business side of being an athletic director will present his biggest challenge, but he can learn that stuff and I will still be down the hall to help him if he wants me to. But the real bottom line is an athletic director has to care. He has to care about the school, care about the sports, care about the coaches, care about the student-athletes and care about the parents. Bryan certainly checked all those boxes.
“I truly believe we have built a special culture at St. Cloud with both the coaches and student athletes. “We always try to win but we do so while competing fairly and acting like gentlemen and young ladies while doing so. Even when we didn’t have the seasons we wanted to, our kids always played hard to the end.”
Godfrey pointed to St. Cloud’s football season as an example. “Between graduation, injuries and other factors, we were a decimated as a football team before the season began,” he said. “But we ended up winning two of our last four, including the major upset of Harmony in our last game. I could not have been more proud of how our team and our coaches hung together during that season.”
Godfrey added that he was even more proud of the academic achievement of St. Cloud athletes during his tenure. Four times in the last five years, St. Cloud was named the Orange Belt Conference Academics champion for highest combined GPA of student athletes, including last year when its teams had a combined 3.546 GPA. “We always keep in mind that the word ‘Student’ always comes first in the term Student-Athlete,” Godfrey said. “Our mission has always been to prepare our student-athletes to succeed both on and off the playing field.”
Finishing his ninth year as head coach and 11th overall on staff, Smart’s overall record is 47-42, including three seven-win seasons.
“I will probably miss Friday nights the most,” Smart said. “There’s just something about running out on the field before the start of a game that’s exhilarating. Obviously I will miss working with the players too. But the thing is that I now have an opportunity to make a mark on the entire athletic program and I am looking forward to that new challenge.”
Smart, 44, added that although he is taking a promotion he does not see it as a stepping stone to any other positions outside the school.
“I love St. Cloud High School and want to be here for the rest of my career. I’d like to think I am a Bulldog for life," he said.
Godfrey noted that assistant football coach and had wrestling coach Mike Short would become the interim head football coach and the school would post the job on Monday. Short is expected to be on the list of potential replacements.
