SANDPOINT — It was quite a successful fall sports season in every sense imaginable for Sandpoint High this season. With two more state championships and five district titles under the Bulldogs’ belt, what has been a part of this recipe for success you may ask? First-year athletic director, TJ Clary, said the high school’s mantra ‘winning on and off the field’ has made a big difference in the athletic careers of many students lately.

This year, the Bulldogs vowed to put an even bigger emphasis on what it means to be a student-athlete. Clary, along with many others, fine-tuned the school’s academic-athletic accountability process, and it has paid off.

This year over 360 high school students competed in athletic programs offered by the school district, which equates to over one-third of the student population. Although quite challenging at times to monitor the academic performances of every student-athlete, Clary said it was all worth it in the end.

“It wasn’t perfect; I had to let it fail a little bit,” Clary said regarding his newfound academic-athletic accountability process. “That being said, I’m already excited for next year. This academic-athletic accountability has changed the culture of this school and I had no idea it was going to do that.”

In the student-athlete department alone, students have been excelling tremendously. The boys swimming and cross country teams were named 4A academic state champions, and athletes cut their number of failing grades in half when compared to last year at this time. Clary said a longtime teacher mentioned to him that it was single-handedly one of the biggest changes for the better the school has seen since he has been here.

Clary said a big change is that students are being more actively pushed to turn in their work ahead of time, before deadlines, and in turn that has given the school an opportunity to reflect on their own grading practices.

“Not only did that help a bunch, but is also opening up an opportunity for our admin team to talk to teachers about grading practices,” Clary said. “It will change the high school community … by putting more pressure on students to manage their time better and get work turned in ahead of time. It puts some more pressure on our teachers to put grades out sooner, and that will help us tell if our students are learning the material or not.”

Clary referenced that teachers putting out grades quicker, rather than one to two weeks after-the-fact, was something that he believes is really helping students to succeed.

“We’re about to go in a direction people can’t even imagine,” Clary said in regards to Sandpoint sports. “I don’t believe you can go into a season and not think about the full picture. When I was talking to head girls basketball coach, Will Love, he talks about these things — he realized that in order to win a state championship you have to win in so many other aspects of life — win the mental side of things, with family, with friends, with school, teachers. You have to win the whole thing… We are teaching kids that it feels good to win and we’re better than just winning on the court/field.”

Clary said he wants to help students not just succeed in sports, but in learning how to win as a husband, a wife, a parent, a friend, and just simply conquer the world with a winning mentality.

“I think we’re going to see a lot more cool things around here if we continue to focus on these things,” Clary said. “... Are our programs perfect, no, we have a lot of work to do, especially winning off the field. We have room for tons of growth, and I’m not gonna stop until we have all of those areas fixed. We are opening up a sleeping giant and are going to be seeing more state titles, more district championships, and more wins here in Sandpoint.”

Clary said when it comes to student-athlete academic accountability, he really held hard to holding students accountable off the field in his first sports season as athletic director. He is looking to continue to build and grow with SHS and help the student body adapt a ‘winning mentality’ in all the areas of their life.