‘Culture trumps everything’

Sara Honnold is casting strong vision as she becomes Nodaway Valley’s new activities director and middle school dean of students, beginning July 1. She’s very eager to hit the ground running supporting the district’s activity sponsors, coaches and educators.

The wife of NVHS business teacher and co-head wrestling coach Brad Honnold, Sara is very excited to move their entire family to Adair County from Clarinda soon, where they’ve spent most of their lives. She most recently was a high school guidance counselor at Clarinda.

“I feel like this is the right time and right opportunity,” she told the newspaper over the phone last Thursday. “I’ve had a lot of opportunities that have really molded me to be in the right place at the right time.”

Strong and effective coaching staffs and activity sponsors already in place are encouraging signs for Honnold as she begins the activities director position. She sees culture-building going on in multiple areas, including weight training, girls basketball and track, wrestling, and other area, including excitement that is building surrounding football right now.

“I feel like we have a lot of people who are just eager to learn and eager to move in a direction that will move things forward for kids,” Honnold said. “I’m excited to be part of that and take a leadership role within that.”

At a meeting with coaches and activity directors or sponsors last week, a main part of the vision Honnold cast with them is that culture trumps everything. She drew some of these principles from the book “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” and explained some concepts from it that tie into coaching.

“We have to pour that into our kids in order for any of our programs to be successful,” Honnold said. “We have to be pushing culture on them all the time, whether it’s getting on the bus to go somewhere or coming back into the school building. We’re always leaving things cleaner than how we found them and pushing that we’re raising kids of character here, not just focusing on the wins and loss ratio, and how that can have an impact on really building a better program.”

While Honnold admits she’s a “sports person,” she doesn’t believe her dean of students role should be approached any differently than her activities director role. In it, she intends to take full responsibility of leading and supporting the middle school’s staff and students.

“Talking about middle school or high school kids, culture is culture is culture. That will build things, whether you’re talking about kids on the field or in the classroom,” Honnold said. “Teachers are pushing the same things, they’re building an environment that’s safe for kids that they can be part of. It’s going to make better results, whether that’s test scores or scores on the field.”

Honnold has coached volleyball, basketball, softball and track and field at some point or another during her career. On the administration side, Honnold carries to Nodaway Valley managerial experience from Clarinda Academy and more of an administrative experience from Clarinda, from her guidance counselor role.

“I was a little apprehensive about [our son] Ashton coming to school there because I was still in Clarinda and I assumed we would be there for the rest of our lives,” Honnold said. “To see the way the community embraced Brad and Ashton both, it made it an easy decision to come to Nodaway Valley.”