Schools

Meet Malcolm Hill, MRH's New Athletic Director

Malcolm Hill comes to Maplewood Richmond Heights High School after a successful coaching and teaching career at Normandy High School.

In July, Malcolm Hill started as the athletic director for . Hill worked in the Normandy School District for 17 years in different capacities.

(See related on Patch: Hill's Son Has Been Heavily Recruited)

We at Patch.com asked Hill to talk to us about his background, transition into the new job and what goals he's established in the athletic department.

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The dialogue has been slightly edited for grammar and length.

BIOGRAPHY INFORMATION


Family:
Angelia Anderson Hill, wife; three sons (15, 12, 6) and one daughter (2).

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Home town: East St. Louis, IL (Assumption High School)

Residence: Fairview Heights, IL

Education: Studied social studies and special education at University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he played basketball. Has master's degrees from National Louis University and Lindenwood University.

Coaching experience: Coached varsity basketball at in 1994-95 before taking a teaching and coaching job in the Normandy School District. Hill coached varsity basketball for 11 years (record of 192-80). He won six conference championships in the Suburban North and East conferences (the district changed conferences) and was named coach of the year five times in those two conferences.

Administrative experience: Hill has worked as Normandy High School's athletic director for the past three years. He's also worked as assistant principal for activities, assistant principal for summer school and social studies department chair.

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Why Maplewood Richmond Heights?

I've served in several roles in the Normandy School District, and then this situation presented itself. I looked into the school district. Maplewood Richmond Heights School District is one of the best school districts in the state of Missouri based on the comeback that it made 12 years ago. It wasn't in great shape 12 years ago. Dr. Henke put a great plan into place and this district has turned around.

Can you talk to us about your transition?

I had a lot of experience coming into the job. That's why I was confident that I can come in here and get things running the correct way. And they've already had a lot of athletic success so I think it's going to be a smooth transition. The experience of being assistant principal has helped… and being an athletic director, that's the experience that I really brought.

I went into a situation at Normandy where the athletic department was $50,000 over budget, so I put some systems in place to red-tape the spending. I have experience working with payroll, so that helps. One of the biggest parts of this job is the financial part of it. It's a huge part of the job. It's just a lot of dollars and cents and a lot of paperwork.

How do the school districts compare?

They're different academically. Normandy had its problems as far as accreditation and that's an ongoing struggle there, whereas Maplewood Richmond Heights is a model for the St. Louis area. That's the biggest difference.

Normandy is much bigger. It's made up of 23 or 24 different municipalities where you have to engage several communities to work together in order to help you make the job successful.

What are some of your goals for the district?

We need to get more of our female athletes involved in the athletic program. I think volleyball is headed in the right direction, as well as girls track. I really like our girls basketball coach, Phillip Crawford; he's working hard and we're trying to get those numbers up. We'd like to get girls soccer where they become very strong.

Another goal is we're in the process of forming a strong partnership with Maplewood Richmond Heights Youth Sports. I'm involved in that planning also. We're developing a strong feeder system in the school district - something that we want to intensify.

Another goal of mine: we're going to have formal athletic banquets. It's something I did at Normandy High School. We're going to have fall, winter and spring athletic banquets. We're going to celebrate the success of our teams, and their academic success, with the community, and really reward our student athletes who are doing well. We want to make our athletic banquets very big here.

Could you talk a little bit about the importance of academics?

My philosophy is that athletics are an extension of the classroom. Athletics activities go hand-in-hand with academics, of course with academics having the upper hand.  We have a lot of tremendous athletes in the school, and we want to increase the number of scholarships that come our way. As the athletic department, we want to evaluate transcripts, work closely with teachers. We want to give the student athletes and their parents as much information as possible so they can do what they need to do academically to earn a scholarship at the end of their senior year.


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