After three years as the athletic director at White River Valley, it was time for Heidi Wright to come back home.
Wright, a Bradford, Vt., resident who had a child come through Oxbow High, was hired as the Olympians’ new AD earlier this summer, after Derek Cipriano left for Spaulding High in Barre. She coached a variety of sports at Oxbow, including softball and boys and girls basketball, between 2015 and 2019 at the middle school and junior varsity levels, and also spent two years as a varsity assistant with the boys soccer team.
“For me, it’s coming home,” Wright said. “When I started coaching, I realized I didn’t get to have the greatest impact on athletics as a whole, co-curriculars as a whole, student activities as a whole, because I wasn’t the person leading the department.
“The longer I spent coaching, the more I realized I wanted to be an athletic director. The goal had always been to become the Oxbow AD.”
Wright grew up in Lyman, N.H., and played sports at nearby Lisbon Regional High School. After earning her undergraduate degree, she spent 10 years in corporate work, but the more time she spent away from athletics, the more she missed it, so she returned to school for her master’s in athletic administration at Ohio University.
A year after her long-term goal of the Oxbow AD job was put on hold when the Olympians hired Cipriano in 2018, Wright got the job at White River Valley, which was just one year into existence in its current form following the merger of South Royalton and Whitcomb high schools.
Several Wildcat programs became immediate contenders, with baseball and softball each winning a VPA Division III state title in 2019. Baseball took home two more championships in Division IV in 2021 and 2022, and both basketball teams played in the final four at Barre Auditorium this past winter. The girls track and field team finished atop the podium at this spring’s Division IV championship meet, one year after the boys team did so.
“The largest thing is you need to listen to the student voice; you need to listen to the voice of the community,” Wright said. “Communication is a huge part of what goes into this position. My time at White River Valley really got me started. I was able to go there and try to build a solid department. I’m stepping into a little bit different role at Oxbow because the department is pretty solid, but each one of them has positive things you can learn from each day.”
Oxbow may have been around much longer than White River Valley, but apart from a softball program that has won back-to-back state titles, many Olympian teams have struggled in recent years. Every varsity program except baseball has replaced its head coach since Cipriano arrived, and the girls soccer and basketball teams will have first-year head coaches in the 2022-23 season.
Wright was among the first hires that Oxbow’s new co-principals, Ken Cadow and Ashley Youngheim, made after taking over for Jean Wheeler on July 1. Youngheim said it was “a little intimidating” interviewing for the new AD mere days after stepping into her new position, but by hiring someone already familiar with the school, she and Cadow may not have to be all that hands-on with athletics.
“She’s just so passionate about being part of this community and making it the best it can be,” Youngheim said. “She kept stressing that she wanted to come home and considers Oxbow her home, which we really appreciate as a small, rural, northern community. We want to value people who really want to improve our school and community and do what’s best for our kids.”
Benjamin Rosenberg can be reached at brosenberg@vnews.com or 603-727-3302.