Athletic Director is a Leader in Her Community

For the past 16 years at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, Athletic Director Nancy O'Neil has shown intelligence, passion, determination and plenty of focus — characteristics that are key for any school administrator.

But she says one of the reasons she became an athletic director was to make sure girls got equal treatment.

"One of my primary missions was to promote and advance the role of girls and women in sports, and that meant providing girls with the same opportunities, learning experiences, opportunities to grow, learn and approve that the boys get," O'Neil said, when speaking about one of the reasons she became an athletic director.

O'Neil, who has a total of 29 years of experience as an athletic director, began her career at the school in 1994 and today remains the driving force behind the Lincoln-Sudbury athletic program.

She fell in love with sports and a healthy life style, and she knew that is what she wanted to do that with the rest of her life.

"After what I had experienced as a high school coach, I felt that girls were short-changed. Girls were not getting the same opportunity, the same product, the same experiences as boys and as a coach I wasn't getting the same accommodations as my male counterparts, and I felt this was a huge injustice, and I felt that the only way I was going to change this was to become an athletic director and oversee programs," she said.

She says that the goal of all athletic directors should be making the programs better for all students.

She says being a woman in a man-dominated field does not bother her at all.

"Honestly, I have never felt discriminated against. I have never felt that men have looked at me as a less-than, and I think part of it is I don't think that way. When I get into a group of people as a committee, I just automatically assume that you are my friend, and my colleague, and we are just going to work together to make the experiences better for the kids," said O'Neil.

O'Neil hopes that she comes across as someone who is comfortable with herself, and that she is seen as someone that can be worked with in an effort to build sports programs.

"I am huge on teams, I am huge on sharing leadership. I am really invested, in that I don't know it all, and I won't, and if you have a better idea then I'm psyched," she said. "When you think you know it all, it is time to step away, because you should never stop learning," she said.

Upon arriving at Lincoln-Sudbury, she certainly brought plenty of experience with her. Prior to becoming an athletic director, she was a three -sport captain at UMass Amherst, playing Division 1 lacrosse, basketball and tennis, in addition to some coaching  as well.

O'Neil says she has had the great fortune of working with great coaches, adding that she has been able to hire exceptional ones and be part of community that embraces the cause of the sports program.

"I have had the greatest satisfaction in providing what I generally feel is an educationally sound athletic program, that it is not all about winning, that the primary focus is about learning," said O'Neil. "As a community we take great pride of our athletic programs and their accomplishments."

O'Neil not only serves as the athletic director, but she is also part of the school's wellness program, where she is an advocate for doing a variety of things that are both healthy physically and emotionally for the students and athletes.

O'Neil says being able to adjust and never stop learning has helped her along the way, especially when dealing with some of the more difficult aspects of the position.

"The biggest attribute you can have in this particular job, and in many middle-management positions, is that of emotional intelligence," she said. "The more emotionally intelligent you are, the better you deal with adversity and frustrated people."

She added that she is "in charge of everything and in control of nothing," she said.

Her goal is to make the sports program safe, healthy, productive and fun while on a tight budget, when exploring different avenues to make things more cost effective for families. The school is currently looking into a family cap for sports fees, something O'Neil says she has been in favor of for a long time. She added that the booster club is phenomenal.

O'Neil said that dealing with the economy is in fact the biggest challenge to her job. When the budget is tight, the first thing they look toward cutting is sports programs.

"I would argue that that [sports] is an integral part of the education," she said, "and for many kids, it is what keeps them ticking."