Chris Johnson has coached 13 state championship teams and taught countless English classes in his 22 years at Siuslaw High School.

He says it's time for a new challenge, and that he has as the Vikings' new athletic director.

Thursday he was in Medford, which was nearly 100 degrees, for a district meeting of athletic directors.

Monday, Aug. 15, practice starts for fall sports, and he will be knee-deep in the registration process of student-athletes.

Friday he sat down with Exploding Whale Sports to provide answers to some burning questions.

Exploding Whale Sports: Why take the job, given you will continue to coach track and field and cross country while carrying a teaching load of four classes.

Johnson: It was time for a new challenge. Twenty-two years of doing the same thing, you get a little bit stale, as much as I try to keep things moving, keep things changing.

Obviously, having students in your classroom, you're always on your toes. As I started to think about it, as I started to get ready for the fall, it was exciting to try something new to get my attention.

I've always been a huge sports fan. Growing up I was a sports junky. I like watching almost every single sport. For most of my first 15, 16 years here, I was going to every sporting event. It seems like a natural progression over the course of a career.

There was some conversation that I might have some skills that might help the athletic program, and I hope that's the case. I think I've established myself as someone who can handle a lot of different roles, juggle a lot of different things. I think I'm reasonably organized. Anybody who's ever been a head track coach knows that there are a whole lot of moving parts, variables. I've had a staff that's been consistent over the course of time.

I think that (Siuslaw principal) Kerri (Tatum) and (vice principal) Corky (Franklin) are confident I can do this job. And they plan to be a big help. Hopefully that will work out.

EWS: Can you handle all three hats — teacher, coach and AD?

Johnson: I was asked during the interview if I could, and I told them teaching takes a lot of time. And by decreasing the teaching load, it could work out.

I could be totally wrong, it could be way more than I anticipate. Having three hours in the middle of the day to work on athletics stuff I think is more than enough. Of course after-school stuff will take more time, but that's just part of the job.

I didn't take the (AD) job for one year. If I decide after a few years that this role is too much, I can reevaluate it. There are people all over the place who do both. ... They do great, they win titles. It can be done.

If I were a first-year teacher and I hadn't taught before and I hadn't coached before, it might be different. Maybe I'm naive and maybe I'm stupid, but I think I can do it. Part of why this is going to work is I have a pretty supportive administration. Kerri and Corky both said they want me to keep coaching, and so if there's times I'm double-booked they're going to have my back as long as I communicate with them.

If I get to the end of the year and it's too much, I have to look at giving up one of them. But I don't think that's going to happen. We'll see.

When I started coaching I approached people who were successful and asked a lot of questions. I still do. I was on the phone this year with the high-jump coach at Summit because I knew Destinie Tatum was on the cusp of being a lot better. We just needed some help. You get on the phone and call people. My wife was an AD at Bandon a couple of years ago. I've known (new school superintendent) Andy (Grzeskowiak) for 22 years, and he was athletic director here. (Former AD) Jeromy (Graybill) is a friend and still in the district. Corky is going to be a big help and an advocate for sports, a great resource. It can be done.

EWS: What goals have you set?

Johnson: We'd always like to get more kids out for sports. I'm a strong proponent that if students are involved in extracurricular activities, it's going to have an impact on their lives, and is going to impact their grades in a positive way. Trying to find ways to get more kids out would be great.

One of the things I'd like to do is to strengthen where the department is financially. Obviously we're money starved a little bit. Every department here could use more money. We could use more classes. We could use more teachers. We could use updated facilities. That's the deal with public education, right? Nobody's swimming in money. But there are things we can do, as an athletic department, to raise some funds, and have some fun. Corky and I are talking about some kind of a golf tournament to help fund the athletic department a little bit.

The (Siuslaw Athletic) Booster Club is doing a great job. The people doing the auction are doing a great job. Jennifer Waggoner has that this year. I was at one of their meetings the other night. It's amazing what they're doing. I can't wait.

When you're in the public sector it seems you're always fighting for each little bit, and having to cut all the time. I want to investigate fun ways to make some money, to get some solvency in the department. Hopefully we could do that.

EWS: What are some of your more immediate concerns?

Johnson: Luckily, thanks to my predecessor (Graybill), a lot of the scheduling is done. A lot of scheduling for winter is done.

Just getting to understand how the infrastructure works. Trying to figure out how kids sign up for sports. We have a real nifty (online) site where people can register. They can get in there, but on the other end of it, someone has to manage all that. Learning about what coaches have to do to be certified. There are all kinds of tests they have to take, there are all kinds of new mandates. Some coaches are scrambling to get certifications complete before Monday. They'll do it.

Registration online is going great. But it's just typical, people do things at the last minute. So I'm sure Monday morning will be like it always is. There'll be a line of people showing up. "I didn't know I was supposed to do that." It's been sent out. It's on Facebook. It's on the school web page. My son's a freshman, and I signed him up in about 10 seconds. Paid with credit card. It's pretty slick.

It's just all the things you don't know the answers to. I've been doing the same job for the most part for the past 22 years, and so there's not many times when someone comes up and asks a question that I don't know the answer to, or know where to look for the answer. That's frustrating, moving forward, knowing that sports are starting on Monday and I need to get my ducks in a row to get people going. Like anything new, there's always trepidation. A little bit of intimidation. But we'll figure it out.

EWS: How has the community support been?

Johnson: I'm extremely proud of this school. I didn't go to Siuslaw but I've been at this school for 22 years. I'm extremely proud of what this school does athletically. I think our kids have always been very well coached, have almost always been well behaved, certainly competitive in most sports.

There's some that haven't been as consistent as the coaches would like them to be, but that's cyclical. I think the community is super supportive. Obviously track and field and cross country aren't on the top of the world. People don't wake up every morning and can't wait to watch a cross country meet on TV like they do basketball or football. But I've always felt the community here has been a great supporter.

I've felt like, the day after the state meet, people were excited to get up the next day and look at the newspaper, see how our team did.

It's not just about cross country. I think the people here, this is a community of like 20,000 people, and there's nothing else around us. We're kind of our own little area here. I think people are proud to be Siuslaw Vikings. The parents have always been great, in my experience.

I've always felt like Siuslaw High School was a brand. A lot of that has come from the success of the football program over the years. We had two coaches in 50 years. Lenny Lutero is in the Hall of Fame, and Tim Dodson was a state championship quarterback and a state championship coach. They were always competitive.

I think Tim felt — and he's probably right — that how well the football team was going to do was a great barometer for the environment around the school. People are proud when their sports teams do well. It's America. People like sports. People ask why I'm still here after 22 years. I'm still here because this place is special. I wouldn't want to be an athletic director at a school I didn't feel that way about. This is a special place. Hopefully we'll keep that going.

Like I said, it's really exciting right now. All these young coaches, getting ready to do their part to keep the tradition going.

EWS: How about facilities, and the possibility of adding sports.

Johnson: We have great facilities, and we have an unbelievable maintenance staff that handles our mowing and getting ready for contests. It's a thin crew of about one. The thought of trying to add sports at this point, with the size we have. ... We're one of the smaller 4A schools. We just need to give kids opportunities to do a couple of things every year and focus on that.

We just hired a first-year football coach. We have a brand-new volleyball coach. We have a brand-new boys basketball coach. We have a second-year girls basketball coach. We have a baseball coach who's relatively new. So we have a lot of young coaches right now. The impetus to get kids out kind of falls on the individual sports. Right now it's exciting. Those coaches are excited to be the head coach of a program, and they have their things that they're excited about doing.

Anything I can do to help those coaches, to get people out for sports, I'm willing to do. Try to be an ambassador for sports. Try to walk around the halls and get as many kids out for sports as possible. Try to get rid of road blocks. Help them to get eligible grade-wise. We have an Ian Foster Scholarship for kids who can't afford some of the fees. I think the whole coaching staff, as long as I've been here, has been pro student involvement.

EWS: What would you want to upgrade with the facilities?

Johnson: I know in speaking with Corky and with Sean, the baseball/softball fields are rough here because of the weather. It's one of those things. If we could ever pass a school bond. They would like to have turf, if only for the infield. We'd like to play half our games at home, and sometimes those fields aren't playable. The weather is tough on those facilities.

The gym is great. They've talked about, if they rebuilt the school, they'd keep the gym. They've had some problems with the sound in there, but it's not the end of the world.

The biggest need we have is for a weight room that's a little bit bigger. Jamin did a great job. The booster club did a great job in updating the current weight room. It's awesome. But we certainly need more space in there. It would be great to have a wrestling room, so they're not in the balcony, trying to fight the cheerleaders on one side, and the basketball team, and whistles are blowing and people are screaming and yelling. That's tough on the coaches. If there's one thing, it would be nice to have a big wrestling room and a weight room, somewhere outside.

The school has been here for 40, 50 years, and they've made do. People are resilient.

If someone dropped off a check for $5 million, I'm sure they could spend it.

EWS: What is the state of officiating for high school sports?

Johnson: I don't have a plan to change a whole bunch of things, but one of the things we need to change is, and really be diligent about is, treating our officials with respect. It's the age-old people screaming at officials during contests. Basketball is probably the worst. People should try to officiate sometime. It's not an easy job. I did it, and I was terrible at it. It probably changed my perspective on how you should treat people. There really is a crisis right now in the state of Oregon. Lot of the officials are getting older and retiring, and new officials aren't coming in anywhere near to the same speed that people are retiring. They're down something like 20 percent the last couple of years. So it's a bit of a problem. For young people, it's not a bad way to make a couple extra bucks.

What we really need is some local officials who are trained, because we don't have to pay them travel. People come from Eugene, people come from Coos Bay. We're paying travel, and it's expensive. No. 1, we'd like to have the officials come here and feel like they can officiate a game and people aren't being hostile toward them.

Also, if there's people out there interested in becoming a football or a basketball official especially, call me. There's associations in Eugene and Coos Bay who'd love to have people who are willing to do that.

It's hard work. Those officials work hard. Coming into a hostile environment. Sometime you need to go watch a basketball game where you don't care who wins or loses, and tell me how the officials are. They're probably fine. But when you're invested, and emotionally tied to one side or the other. ... So much officiating is subjective, things happen so quickly.

EWS: How tough is it here to keep student-athletes well-nourished?

Johnson: Nutrition is a constant battle for athletes, trying to eat the right foods. Being able to afford to buy the right foods to eat. To eat enough of the right things. Being able to avoid foods that aren't healthy. We talk about it in track and cross country all the time.

Luckily, there's stuff here, if they're low income. If they qualify for a free lunch. That's one of the best things that's happened to this school district, our in-house food-service program. It's awesome. It's healthy and it's the right size portions.

You don't see the NASCAR guys pull into the gas station to get the regular stuff. They get the high-octane stuff, right. If you have a race car, you put high octane fuel into it. It's something the coaches — and they do a good job with it — have to talk about all the time. You have to preach it: Eat for fuel.

EWS: What are some of the broader issues that have landed on your plate?

Johnson: Basically, as science unravels some of these things for people, the OSAA, the national federation of high school sports, they're not behind at all on coaches education.

This year there's a brand new safety program for football called Heads Up, where you have to do cardiac training, do concussion training, have to do blocking and tackling correctly. They've eliminated some blind side tackling kinds of things.

So that's just as a (people), we figure things out, we figure out solutions to make things safer. Safety is paramount. Go to our OSAA page and it has each coach's name, and the certifications they have to have. If they're not certified on Monday, they can't go on the field. Those things are great.

If you're an old-school football coach and you're upset that we're getting more education and training and more careful about concussions, you must not love football very much. If you want to keep football around, you have to do everything you can do to make sure the kids are staying safe. Coaches' training is a huge part of that.

EWS: Has anything surprised you so far?

Johnson: I went to a meeting yesterday in Medford and found out that we need an emergency management plan in place for every single sport. Didn't know that. Not only do you have to have it in place, it has to be kind of on file and checked and rechecked. So we had to do some heavy lifting today to be ready for Monday. So the coaches have an email that says get your action plan in place. Not only is that one of those unfunded mandates that snuck up on me — I didn't get the job until a couple weeks ago — it's one of those things they said, "We'll be looking, we'll be auditing this to make sure it's in place."

It's great. It's progress. Basically, if there's an emergency on the football field, the coaching staff has a plan in place. Who's going to call 911. Who's going to find the automatic defibrillator. Who's going to use the automatic defibrillator. If the coach passes out, the kids need to know to call 911. Who's first-aid certified?

The (Oregon School Activities Association) is pretty buttoned up. They have a really great tutorial. In fact, the kids are going to wind up seeing it some time. It's called "Anyonecansavealife.org." It's a video of responder-type situations. When someone's life is in the balance, you want a plan to act quickly. What are we going to do if we're off campus. It's just being prepared, like anything else.

I'm trying to be diligent, get the lay of the land, not make a mistake. There's a lot to learn.

EWS: What is your view of the coaching staff?

Johnson: The people we have hired, they're excited.

(Football coach) Jamin Pool is a great teacher. He came in here two years ago, and you know from Day 1 when someone is prepared, as a teacher. He earned the kids' respect right off the bat. His classes are organized. His kids were learning. The were doing some things that perhaps hadn't been done before. From Day 1, this guy is buttoned up and dialed in. I didn't talk a lot to Tim about Jamin, but what he said is this guy is ready, he's a pretty talented young man.

(Boys basketball coach) Dylan Perry had a successful career here (as a student). He played some basketball in college. He's excited. I think a lot of people are excited when they realize, "Hey, I'm in charge of this ship. I've got to get going."

(Volleyball coach) Jon Hornung is another one of those guys who came in. He teaches physics and chemistry here. He came in and from the first day he carved a niche out for himself. The staff respects the heck out of him. He's got a great personality and a great disposition. He knows a lot about volleyball.

(Girls basketball coach) Clint Tatum is working really hard. He worked hard this summer to get some girls out for basketball. He's one of those guys who's trying to get them to do other sports, to work on being well-rounded.

(Wrestling coach) Neil Wartnik has some exciting things going on at the lower levels. He's got a camp that's going on this week for wrestling.

(Softball coach) Sean O'Mara has been here for 22 years.

It's a good staff. It makes it a lot easier when you have good people in charge of the programs.

They're just good people.