Appleton East and Appleton West football teams prepare for 2024 season
The Appleton East and Appleton West soccer teams are preparing for the start of the 2024 season.
GREEN BAY – Green Bay Preble needs a new athletic director as the school year begins next week.
Longtime AD/Assistant Principal Dan Retzki resigned from his position to become principal of grades 4K-12 in the Tigerton School District.
Retzki responded to a text message asking about the move, but was not immediately available for comment.
Tim Flood, the Green Bay School District’s extracurricular programs administrator, is in Preble to help during the transition.
Flood served as AD at Green Bay East from 2006 to 2017.
“Everything is pretty new right now,” Flood said. “Right now, the district is still working on developing the plan.”
Retzki was the longest-serving AD in the Green Bay district. He came to Preble in July 2008 after serving as AD in West Bend West for two years.
Previously, he served as Director of Extracurricular Activities at Kaukauna for three years and as AD at Wisconsin Dells for three years.
Retzki was involved in quite an interesting situation this summer before leaving Preble, when the school withdrew its offer to Mark Jonas to become the Hornets’ football coach after his hiring was announced in February.
Preble named former standout running back Brad Boockmeier as interim coach after informing Jonas of his departure.
There is no indication that Retzki’s decision to take the job at Tigerton had anything to do with the football saga.
Two of Green Bay’s four public schools will have new ADs this year. In addition to Preble, Southwest named Chris Williams as AD after Amy Hogan retired in June. Williams is the former head coach of the Green Bay Blizzard.
It is the first time the public school district will have at least two new ADs since 2017, when all vacancies in Southwest, Green Bay East and Green Bay West had to be filled.
This was the largest restructuring for public school ADs since 2006, when the district also had to make new hires at the same three schools. This was the first year that AD positions were converted to full-time administrative positions.
In addition to Retzki’s 15-year tenure, Hogan has been with Southwest since 2017, Steph Mathu with East since 2019 and Robb LaPlant with West since 2023.
Mathu did not respond to a text message when asked if she would be interested in moving from East to fill the void at Preble. Mathu was a star in three sports for the Hornets: volleyball, basketball and softball before graduating in 1993 and is a member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame.
While at Preble, she was an All-State selection in basketball and volleyball and played college basketball at the University of Dayton, where she scored 1,128 points from 1993 to 1997 and ranks fifth in team history with 681 field goals and sixth with 175 3-pointers.
