St. Henry found a veteran to take over as Director of Athletics once Matt Schneider announced his intentions to step down at the end of the school year.
Jim Demler will take his place bringing 22 years of AD experience. Demler, a 1987 Dixie Heights graduate and former Northern Kentucky University baseball player, is finishing his fourth year at Villa Madonna after serving as the second AD in school history at Ryle from 2001-19.
“First off I’d like to thank Mr. Schneider for his dedication to SHDHS, as he steps away to have more time with his family. We are ecstatic to have Jim Demler as our new Athletic Director,” said Grant Brannen, St. Henry Principal. “Jim brings a wealth of knowledge to our student-athletes and SHDHS community. Jim is one of the most respected ADs in the state of Kentucky. He serves on the KHSAA Board of Control and will lead one of the top tier sports programs in Northern Kentucky.”
Demler will be working with two veterans in 32-year head volleyball coach Maureen Kaiser and 30-year head boys basketball coach Dave Faust. St. Henry won the Class A state cross country championship in the fall and the volleyball team won its second state championship in 2021.
Kaiser just hired Demler’s wife Jeni to help with the freshman volleyball team. The former Jeni Brockman played volleyball for Kaiser before graduating from St. Henry in 1997.
“I’m just thrilled he’s coming to St. Henry. He’s got a wide array of interest, talent and expertise having been at Ryle at a public high school going through the growth spurts that happened over there, which I think we’re going to get with the addition of football. He has expertise in football,” Kaiser said. “His kids are older. He’s able to kind of revisit the AD position at an intermediate level. I think it’s a great mix between Ryle and Villa quite frankly.”
Demler started his teaching and coaching career when Ryle opened in 1992 under founding principal Randall Cooper. He assisted Pat Roesel on the baseball team helping the Raiders to region championships in 2007 and ’13. They retired together from the Boone County School System in 2019. Demler took over the AD position there for Charles Holland.
“It’s just working with student-athletes and being around northern Kentucky high school sports,” Demler said. “It’s just fun. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like a job. I know it’s a tedious job where you have to deal with a lot of things. I always come back to watching the student-athletes play and compete. Just being around the kids, seeing them grow and enjoy playing high school sports. All the sports are really neat in their own way. I just come back to that. If I can be a facilitator of making sports the best they can possibly be, that’s very rewarding.”
During his tenure, the Villa Madonna Vikings cross country teams found themselves in the running for Class A state championships in recent years. The Villa Madonna boys finished runner-up to St. Henry the last two years and the Villa Madonna girls finished runner-up to Lexington Christian in 2021.
“I really enjoyed my time at Villa. I want to thank them for giving me the opportunity there,” Demler said. “Hopefully, I did some good there. The principal Pam McQueen gave me a chance there. I just could not pass up an opportunity to be an AD at St. Henry. It’s just such a rich tradition of athletic success. We have tremendous Hall of Fame coaches there, tremendous facilities. I’m just really looking forward to getting over there and getting to work. I just want to keep the ball rolling.”
Demler made the jump from a big county high school to a small private school. Coaches at smaller schools often say they have to share athletes.
Kaiser said she wants the volleyball players to play other sports to work other parts of the body. But Kaiser acknowledged it is tough because club volleyball takes up so much time and money that players have to pick between it and other sports. Junior Mia Ryan played volleyball and basketball this year.
“Villa was the same way. That’s an important aspect. But even going to the smaller schools, the only difference I can see is there’s more athletes,” Demler said. “There are more teams and more athletes per team. But that’s where the differences stop. There are a lot of similarities. Coaches are great. They want to give their student-athletes the best possible experience. St. Henry has a lot of great pieces in place. I know it’s going to be more time. It’s going to be a challenge. But I love the possibilities there.”
One of Demler’s first challenges will be helping to start a football program. He saw that at Ryle with all their athletic programs. Ryle’s football program had its struggles at first. But the Raiders finished 8-4 for their first winning season in year four in 1995. The Raiders finished 46-38 in the 1990s in the first eight years as a program. Ryle finished state runner-up in Class 4A in 2006.
“St. Henry has tremendous potential to build a great football program,” Demler said. “I’m just looking forward to the challenge of starting a program. One of the first tasks is to hire a coach and kind of go from there.”
The one sport at St. Henry that has struggled in recent years is softball. The Crusaders finished 6-18 last year and last made the Ninth Region Tournament in 2019 with the last 34th District Tournament championship coming in 2018. The program has a new head coach this year in Misty Feigh.
“I think the numbers are kind of down in general with softball,” Demler said. “I think that’s a challenge with a lot of ADs around Northern Kentucky. I hate to say it. But my daughters’ sport volleyball takes away from it with the club stuff and that. We do have to get more kids interested in softball because it is a great sport. I feel confident we can get that program going.”
The Demler family will again have an interesting family dynamic this fall. Madi Demler is a freshman volleyball player at St. Henry and Joci Demler is a junior at Villa Madonna.
“It’ll be hectic. I’ll always be an advocate for Villa Madonna. I’m just so fortunate,” Jim Demler said. “My daughter’s had such a great experience there. There’s great people over there and the student-athletes work just as hard as anyone in the area. I already experienced that last year. It’ll be a fun dynamic to have the daughters go up against each other and me wearing red instead of royal blue.”
Demler said the plan is to finish strong at Villa Madonna. He will hit the ground running at St. Henry in June.
