Meet LASA’s new athletic coordinator, Bryan Crews. Crews will oversee and support head coaches throughout LASA and LBJ’s UIL split and as LASA moves to the Eastside Memorial campus in 2021. As athletic coordinator, Crews aims to not only lead LASA athletics through these transitions but also to elevate the program to be successful in the 5A district. Crews, who has experience in both head coaching and administration, hopes to apply what he has learned to his new role.

Q: What are your responsibilities as LASA’s athletic coordinator?

A: I’m going to oversee the entire athletic program and all the coaching staff, equipment, facilities—anything having to do with athletics will be my job in the coming years, of course, but at some point, there’s going to be a transition to the new campus. I’ll be helping transition the athletic program to the new facilities that will be taking over the new campus. But there is more to my job than oversight and supervising coaches. I need to be a support to the coaching staff and help them in any way I can.

Q: What sports have you coached, and how will you apply those experiences as athletic coordinator?

A: I have been a head coach in football, track and powerlifting. The head coaching experience is important because I’ll be supervising head coaches of all the other sports. The weight training experience is important because I plan on helping with strength and conditioning in the summer and working with students in the weight room. And just being a head coach helps with the administrative side of the job. I’ve also been an assistant athletic coordinator before at one of the schools I worked at.

Q: Are there any challenges that LASA’s rigorous academic focus poses for the athletics department?

A: I see it more as pros because we want our athletes to be able to persevere through adversity and be able to face challenges, and students at LASA are challenged every day in the classroom. And that’s not always the case. That hasn’t always been the case at other schools I’ve worked at. And so I think the students’ challenges in the classroom will translate to their ability to face challenges in sports.

Q: What is the biggest challenge that comes with separating from LBJ next year?

The biggest challenge is that we’re sharing a campus for another year. That means we’re sharing facilities, we’re sharing space, etc., so the biggest challenge is all of the logistics that go into sharing space with two athletic programs. But logistically, we’re working with the athletic department on our use of Delco for basketball and volleyball, and our use of Noack for football, soccer, and softball. They’ve been very cooperative with us and they really want to help us.

Q: What district will LASA Athletics be participating in?

A: All of the sports are five and football will be independent for two years. That means football will not be playing in a district. So we were playing varsity opponents this year, but for the next two years, we won’t be in a district. And that’s just to sort of help the football program get up to speed to be able to play against some of the opponents. Schools like Liberty Hill and Marble Falls would have been in our district had we been in a district, but this gives us a couple of years to get up to speed to be able to play them.

Q: What is your vision for the athletics department?

A: The biggest thing is that I think we have the potential to be extremely successful in all sports. We’ve seen examples of that in a lot of the sports we compete in, like swimming. So I think we have the potential to be extremely successful without sacrificing our academic standards. And we will never do that, you know, and I knew that when I took this job that the academic standards would never be put on the back burner when compared with athletics. And I think you can have both. I think we can be very successful in athletics just like we are in fine arts and robotics and all those other things. I think athletics can fall right in with all those other things. I think once students realize that there is an athletic program, that LASA does have its own athletic program, once people actually see it and it has legs a lot of students that are interested in academics but still want to play sports from all over the district are gonna want to come here.

Q: What are you most looking forward to about being LASA’s athletic coordinator?

A: It’s very exciting to be starting an athletic program. I think it’s sort of a dream that a lot of coaches have, to start a program. So that’s really exciting for me.