Olson steps down

No athletic director is in charge of Newport Harbor High sports.

The only positive is there are no official games left to play. The school year ends this week.

At the start of the week, Principal Michael Vossen fired Eric Tweit after he served as an athletic director for 20 years. Vossen said he wanted to move the athletic program in a new direction.

A day later, Vossen said he met with the school’s other athletic director, Fletcher Olson, who shared the responsibilities with Tweit for the last 10 years.

The two talked, Vossen said, about transitioning into the next season.

Olson wanted no part of it.

Olson said she resigned Wednesday as an athletic director, leaving the Sailors with no athletic director to lead the boys’ and girls’ teams.

“I think when you work with someone like Tweit for that long, you develop a good rapport, you’re basically a team,” Olson said. “As athletic directors and coaches, you’ve done things together for like forever, so you can’t even consider doing it on your own.

“Our athletic secretary [Judy Ayers] is retiring [after 26 years] and Eric was fired. I’ve decided to move on. The school is going through a lot of changes.”

Vossen said he believes those changes in sports are necessary.

The changes almost happened at the end of the previous school year.

Around this time last year, Tweit said he and Olson were let go by Vossen, only to get their jobs back six weeks later. Tweit and Olson, Tweit said, never asked to return.

They won’t this time either.

“Once they got rid one of us, the other one was going to go,” Tweit said. “We were a team. If we couldn’t do it together, we weren’t going to do it.”

Olson and Tweit plan to return next school year to teach and coach.

Olson said she plans to be involved with the school’s tennis program for the 20th season and work in the business department.

Tweit, who was hired at Newport Harbor in 1980, expects to teach physical education and coach girls’ cross country and track and field.

“She resigned because she saw what happened to me and [baseball coach] Evan Chalmers,” said Tweit, who was removed on Monday, the same day as Chalmers, who went 35-62-1 in four years. “For our school to lose what she offered, for her to have to feel she needed to step down, is too bad.

“It wasn’t just about athletics with her. She was the one person who told the rest of the school that athletics was OK. For me, personally, [her resigning] is one of the best compliments she could ever pay me.”

Vossen said he respects Olson’s resignation. He added his assistant principal, David Martinez, would be taking over the role of athletic director until the school finds a replacement.

Vossen said he is going to meet Friday with the coaches at the school.

“To talk about a transition and have a candid conversation,” Vossen said. “People are always going to be disappointed with personnel changes. I firmly believe with the teams and experience we have we’re going to be in a good place.

“This will work itself out.”

Kristen Case, the boys’ and girls’ tennis coach, hopes so.

“I think so much is going on right now that I’m not shocked,” Case said of seeing three colleagues lose their athletic jobs this week. “I talked to [Olson] for a split second. We crossed paths. She looked indifferent, no melancholy, just her usual self.”

Tweit said Vossen asked him to step down last Friday. When Tweit decided against the move, he said Vossen let him go.

Tweit and Olson split the athletic director duties. Tweit usually handled the boys and Olson the girls.

Case praised Olson as other coaches at Newport Harbor have supported Tweit since his removal.

The Sailors have won CIF Southern Section team championships in football, boys’ and girls’ cross country, boys’ and girls’ water polo, boys’ and girls’ volleyball, boys’ swimming, boys’ soccer, and girls’ track while Tweit or Olson was athletic director.

“I think she’s amazing,” said Case, a 2000 Newport Harbor graduate, who played tennis for Olson. “She was a great coach when I was here. Tennis here was unbelievable for me and I got a chance to play in college [at UC Berkeley]. She’s the reason I came back [in 2007 to coach].

“She’s extremely organized, real supportive, and a great leader. She made the team environment fun for me and always gave me the motivation to go further. I’m happy she’s still going to be coaching with me.”

Many at Newport Harbor wish Olson and Tweit were still teammates, leading the athletic program together, because no one currently is in charge.