David Jordan AD

Longtime Catholic High baseball coach David Jordan has been named as the next Athletic Director for the Panthers.

Following the departure of AD and head football coach Scott Wattigny, Matt Desormeaux was named as head coach for the CHS football team, but was unable to take on the role of AD due to his current position as assistant principal.

Jordan, who has spent 27 years in charge of the Panthers, said it didn’t take much convincing for him to accept the position.

“I’m 59, so this is my 33rd year coaching baseball,” he said. “It’s about time for me to pass that baton on to some younger guys, but I still feel that I have a lot to offer, whether that means teaching or mentoring young coaches.”

Jordan said he has no plans to hang up his cleats just yet, but will use his position as AD to develop Catholic High athletics as a whole and bring back some much-needed discipline to the school.

“It’s about trying to get our athletic program going in a different direction,” Jordan said of his focus for the school. “I think a lot of what we’re seeing on the football field and the baseball field is not just a result of poorly-coached teams, but rather a cultural change that exists in our school. I think we need to change that.”

“We used to be hard-nosed, tough and gritty kids. We have to get that back, because right now, I’m not seeing it.”

Jordan said that his connection to Desormeaux will make it easy for the pair to get CHS back on track.

“I coached Matt at Catholic High and of course I coached against him when he was at AES, so it’s going to be really easy to work with him,” Jordan explained. “All of us are on the same page as far as seeing the issues that exist, from how we handle our athletic PE to how we discipline and approach our athletes across the board.”

“There’s a lot of entitlement in the dugout and on the football field, and there’s a lot of softness and finger pointing. We’ve got to find a way to not have those kids on our teams because they won’t help you win. This is not politics, this is competitive baseball. If you’re soft and you feel entitled then you don’t support your teammates and it’s just a bad situation.”

Another priority for Jordan is to identify and recruit quality coaches to maintain the high standards that CHS fans have come to expect. As a state champion coach, Jordan said he knows what kind of person he is looking for.

“It’s a priority for us to find some quality coaches,” he said. “We have to do a better job of recruiting people that can coach and teach and get them into our school. I don’t think we have an athletic mission statement, and it’s time that we have one. We’re going to establish that and we’re going to have a code of ethics for the athletes and I’m going to make darned sure that every one of them is abiding by it.”

“Right now, there’s a lot of disparity between the programs. Some of them are really discipled and some of them aren’t disciplined at all. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be and that’s not the way it was four years ago.”