By Travis Smola
The Schoolcraft school board approved four more staff hires at its August board meeting.
Trustees welcomed new high school science teacher Katherine MacDonnell, middle and elementary school social worker Laura Schmidt, pre-K lead teacher Katie Slavin and eighth grade English language arts teacher Mary Visscher.
The board also approved a proposal to add a fall girls’ golf team as a club sport for the high school. Twelve girls approached athletic director Jeff Clark about the idea of a team earlier this year and boys’ head coach Terry Haas has volunteered his time for the unpaid position as head coach.
“It is a sport that we probably should have had a long time ago,” Haas told the board. “There are college scholarships that are not handed out because they don’t have enough girls playing at the level that could get those scholarships.”
The team is starting totally from scratch and Haas said he expects there will be some growing pains at first. Some of the girls on the team have never held a club. Because of that, the team may compete at the junior varsity level the first year.
As a club sport, parents will provide all transportation to and from events. The team will use both Olde Mill Golf Club and States Course for their practices, but home tournaments will be hosted at the latter course. The team is joining the six-school KVA league with teams from Comstock, Michigan Lutheran, Lake Michigan Catholic, Kalamazoo Christian and Kalamazoo Hackett.
The board also recognized a Soaring Eagle award winner, 1998 alum Nick Perez, for his contributions to the community as president of the rocket football team organization and for his efforts in helping with removing old bleacher boards at the stadium.
“Nick is a very humble and selfless man who deserves to be recognized as one of our Soaring Eagles,” Superintendent Rusty Stitt said.