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This will be the first athletic director's job and first administrative role at a school district for Ahern, who is 27 years old. He previously was the head baseball coach at Sammamish High School and was Seattle Public Schools’ sports facility manager.
Ahern’s athletic administration ambitions came after his college baseball playing days at Texas Tech in 2008. As Sammamish’s baseball coach the past three years, his interest in high school athletics from an administrative side stemmed from working with Sammamish AD Pat McCarthy.
“I knew pretty quickly that was a career I wanted to get into,” Ahern said, “and it seemed like a good fit for me.”
Ahern earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Sciences from Texas Tech and received his registered athletic administration certificate from Ohio University earlier this year. He’s currently in the Master’s in Athletic Administration program at Central Washington University. He’s a 2003 graduate of Eastlake High School in Sammamish.
Ahern officially begins his new duties at Olympia Aug. 13 – two days before the start of high school football practices, and one week before the start of the rest of fall sports practices. He said he and his wife, Jessica, and their two young children – son Alex and daughter Madelyn – plan on moving to Olympia from Renton soon.
Read more of this story in Thursday's Olympian
