When Jeff Hester took over the Columbus North athletics department in 2008, the Bull Dogs already had one of the top across-the-board athletic programs in the state.
Over the past 12 years, Hester has helped North continue that trend.
The Bull Dogs won eight state team championships and 13 state individual titles during Hester’s tenure. They won 85 Conference Indiana, 122 sectional, 73 regional and 25 semistate titles.
Monday night, Hester announced that he is leaving North for the assistant athletics director job at Carmel.
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“He has helped lead our athletic program to many successes, but this goes beyond the wins and losses,” North principal David Clark said. “The way he has put student-athletes first, it has been superior. He always has had a vision of what something needed to be or what something needed to look like. He always was working on new ways to market us or brand our program. His vision was outstanding. It will be very difficult to fill the open position.”
Hester became the P.T. Barnum of area athletics directors. He arranged for parachutists to drop in with the game ball at North vs. Columbus East football games and brought in frisbee-catching dogs and jump rope extraordinares to perform at halftime of big basketball games.
The Harlem Globetrotters came to North for games in 2015 and 2016. Former Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck’s Change The Play Camp appeared in 2017 and North hosted an I’m Possible Basketball Camp for several summers.
Meanwhile, Hester has overseen upgrades to facilities in nearly every sport, including the construction of baseball and softball fields at Southside Elementary, a cross-county course at Ceraland and renovations to Max Andress Field and Memorial Gym. The latest project has been a combined effort with Columbus East and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. for a new soccer complex that is expected to be ready by this fall.
“The job has evolved and changed so much just since I took over,” Hester said. “I definitely feel like I’ve left the athletic department in a very good position.”
Joining the best
While Hester is leaving one of the state’s top athletic programs, he is joining arguably the No. 1 athletic program in the country. Carmel, which has won a state-best 154 state championships, recently won the 2019-20 national Max Preps Cup title for overall athletics success.
Around the time of the boys basketball sectional, Hester learned that Bruce Wolf, who had been Carmel’s assistant athletics director for more than two decades, was retiring.
“It’s just an opportunity where I felt like I’d look into it and find out more about the position,” Hester said. “I went through their process, and the more I learned about the position, it just seemed like a really good fit for me professionally.”
So Jim Inskeep, the Carmel athletics director the past 20 years, sent Hester a link for the application process. The pair had known each other from when Hester was athletics director at Heritage Christian from 2003-08 and at North.
Hester lived in Carmel when he worked at Heritage Christian.
“Carmel kind of felt like home to me,” Hester said. “It’s one of those positions that doesn’t present itself often. It’s a great opportunity professionally.”
At the same time, Hester wasn’t eager to leave North. His wife Jennifer is a dean of students there, and her daughter Sydney will be a senior next year. They have two other children at Southside Elementary.
Hester said the family will continue to live in Columbus, and he will be commuting to Carmel.
“Columbus North is just a fantastic place,” Hester said. “Some of the best coaches in the state are coaching at Columbus North. It was extremely tough. There were a lot of sleepless nights on my part because I absolutely love Columbus and love Columbus North.
An unlikely ally
One of Hester’s best friends since he has been in Columbus has been East athletics director Pete Huse. The pair began sharing ideas after Huse came to East five years ago.
“For me, what I really take a lot of pride in, and I thought Jeff and I did a nice job is, we were able to work so well together and took out the East-North rivalry,” Huse said. “We became very, very close friends, and I’m very happy of the friendship we were able to make. I really like how he and I fought for our coaches, fought for our schools, fought for our interests, but at the end of the day, we wanted what was best for the community. It wasn’t an East vs. North thing.”
Hester was named District 3 Administrator of the Year by the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association in 2015 and District 4 Athletic Director of the Year by the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association in 2016. He recently recently earned his Certified Master Athletic Administrator (CMAA) designation by the by the NIAAA.
Hester will continue his duties as the Bull Dogs’ athletics director until June 4 and will start at Carmel on July 1.
“Professionally and personally, I’m very sorry to see Jeff Hester leave us, but I completely understand and support him,” said Tim Bless, North’s football coach and assistant athletics director. “Coaching for Jeff and working alongside him in the athletic office, I’ve come to greatly respect his passion for student-athletes, his work ethic, sincerity and consistency. During his tenure, Columbus North athletics has maintained a standard of excellence that not many schools can match. I attribute much of the credit to Jeff Hester. Personally, I have so appreciated Jeff’s unwavering support of me and wish him and his family all the best going forward.”
Clark had mixed emotions.
“I’m sad and I’m happy,” Clark said. “It’s a two-edged sword. I’m happy for Jeff and the career opportunity he has. However, I also am sad for our school and our program in that he is an outstanding athletic administrator and will be missed.”
