Athletics Director Chris Hartley described one of his favorite memories from his 18-year-long-tenure at Lakeside: the opening of the Paul G. Allen Athletics Center in 2014. “It was right after New Year’s,” he said. “Isiah Brown” — the 2015-2016 Gatorade Washington Boys Basketball Player of the Year, an achievement now displayed in the gym — “scored 56 points that night, so it was a new record, and the whole building was just packed.”
Mr. Hartley applied for a position at Lakeside in 2008 after hearing positive reviews from previous faculty. When he was hired, his job was to create and run the summer school programs. Over the course of six years, he created and organized the Upper School summer school courses, the Middle School academic camps, and the summer athletic camps.
Mr. Hartley stepped into the athletics director role after it was vacated in 2014. “Growing up, if you asked me what my biggest identity was, it would be athlete,” he said. “I played just about every sport I could.” He focused on football and lacrosse in high school, continued playing lacrosse in college, and realized that he wanted to be an educator. At Lakeside, Mr. Hartley has coached golf, football, and lacrosse.
Looking back on his time serving as athletics director, he wishes he had spent more time watching practices and games when he first started out in the position and less time in his office. “I found that my best connections [were] when [I was] out watching and talking with coaches and athletes,” he said. This process allowed him to see what athletics does for students, “which goes beyond winning games,” he said. “It’s about teaching life skills that I think are hard to learn in other places.” His favorite parts of the job were coaching sports, helping coaches work through challenges, and helping the program evolve. He hopes people found him approachable and that people recognized his efforts to equally support all Lakeside sports teams, athletes, and coaches.
In the athletics department, Mr. Hartley spent a lot of time on professional development with coaches. Specifically, he tried to help coaches understand what it means to be in a diverse community by understanding their own biases and breaking down stereotypes. “Coaches are teachers; we just have a different kind of classroom,” he said. “Coaches want you to get better every day, and my push was that we as coaches are going to get better at what we do [as well].”
He worked hard to increase the percentage of students who participated in athletics. That number is now above 95% at the middle school, and between 75 and 80% at the upper school. He wanted to ensure that students felt safe participating in athletics, and that if they didn’t participate, it was because they were passionate about something else, not because they didn’t feel supported playing a sport.
“It’s amazing to have a group of students that are multitalented,” he said. He said he loves how Lakeside embraces interdisciplinary excellence and encourages students to dig deep in both sports and the arts and that he appreciates the close, trusting relationships between adults and students. “I would say, more than teaching, adult mentors here … [help students] learn to think and process whatever they’re going through,” he said. Indeed, as evidenced by the two lacrosse players who spoke about Mr. Hartley at assembly on May 27, students viewed Mr. Hartley as a mentor who taught them valuable life lessons.
After Lakeside, Mr. Hartley will be moving to Florida with his family. He explained that he faced very serious health difficulties in recent years, including a cancer diagnosis and multiple surgeries. He has decided to prioritize his personal health and family. “I just decided between my own personal journey and a couple of my dear friends passing away in the last year … I want to change how my day is,” he said. He plans to work remotely as a college counselor for the Seattle-based college counseling company, Path Ivy.
