The school started its second year without an athletic director after Joe Lawrence, who had the job last year, stepped down to focus on his job as the varsity boys basketball coach.
Though Tracy Unified School District had interviewed potential athletic directors, the job remained unfilled as of the start of the school year. Thornton said Tracy Unified Superintendent Jim Franco asked him if he would come out of retirement for a year, possibly more.
Thornton said he will be at Kimball, where his wife, Kristi, is a teacher, for the 2010-11 school year, and he will stick around to mentor a new athletic director once the district hires someone who wants the permanent job.
“It amounts to a part-time job, but these first two weeks, it’s been a full-time job,” he said, adding that the first year of varsity sports at the school, with the opening of a new stadium this week, would make this a hectic semester under the best of circumstances.
Thornton retired at the end of the 2008-09 school year after 16 years as a physical education teacher at West High School. He was the Wolf Pack’s original athletic director and varsity boys basketball coach.
He then started up with the California Interscholastic Federation’s Sac-Joaquin Section, where he serves on the committees that rank high school teams as they vie for playoff spots. He also is part of the staff that runs the section’s playoff and championship contests, including football, basketball and baseball championship games, as well as track and field meets and golf tournaments.
He will stay involved with CIF while running Kimball’s athletics.
“It’s going to be pretty involved until we get caught up,” he said. “I hope it settles down and I don’t have to be here all day every day, but I knew it was going to be rough at the beginning.”
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