Telegraph photo by TOM KING Souhegan's Kelli Braley will continue to coach field hockey and girls hockey after being named earlier this month as the Sabers' new athletic director.

Coaching has been a huge part of Kelli Braley’s life. So has parenting.

Recently, she’s added a third item to that group – administration.

Braley has begun her new job in the last couple of weeks as the newly named Souhegan High School athletic director, which makes her a pioneer of sorts. She is the first woman to hold that position, and is the fifth AD in the school’s history.

“I’ve known for a bit this is a position I would want as my career progressed,” she said. “A couple of years ago when the position was available, the timing wasn’t right for me.”

But now it is. Her son Colin is going into his senior year at John Stark Regional, and her daughter Amelia will be going into the seventh grade in the Amherst system.

She wasn’t expecting Dan Wyborney to step down in the spring, but when he did, “I had to jump at the chance.”

“We’re sitting in a really important place in our kind of history right now as a school,” she said. “I knew I could be impactful right away.”

Braley will also continue to, for now, coach Souhegan girls varsity field hockey and varsity girls hockey. She left that final call up to new Souhegan principal Mike Berry and after some discussion gave her the thumbs up.

She knew that it would be a tough call; as she says, “I see my job as the athletic director as an opportunity to be everybody’s coach, and help coach our coaches to a large extent. So that was going to be there for me if I didn’t have my own team to coach, so to speak.”

She’s get staff support to help her when she can’t be on site at events when her games are on the road, etc.

“Schedules are going to be pretty flexible moving forward,” she said, referring to what fall sports may look like in the pandemic world. “We have a great staff that supports each other, so we definitely have the staff in place to support me.”

It’s nothing new for the Sabers; longtime AD Bill Dod was the baseball coach and the last couple of years Wyborney coached varsity girls soccer.

Braley says what she wants to see from the whole athletic program she now oversees is not much different than what she’s wanted to see from her teams over the years.

“I think we need to set the bar high for the expectations for our coaches and student athletes as far as what they get out of it,” she said. “If we have the right culture, and we invest in those people and put them in the right places, there’s nothing that we won’t be able to accomplish.”

Braley has worked for some quality ADs over the years, and feels it will be interesting “what those wish list things I’ve been dreaming up over the last decade (as a coach) are doable, and why maybe some of them aren’t.”

In other words, she’ll see what she can change and what she can’t once she realizes more of how things work in New Hampshire and at Souhegan that she may not have known before.

“I’ll see how I can be able to influence what I can influence,” she said, “and realize the good things that need to stay, and realize why things have happened the way they have.”

Braley thinks that there will be some type of sports this fall as too many student athletes are hungry.

“We kind of owe it to them to be able to figure out how we can do it as safely as possible,” she said, “and give them that outlet.”

Braley said athletic directors across the state have been meeting every week to prepare for what will likely be individual school district decisions as far as sports goes.

And there seems to be some strong sentiment that high school football will exist in some way, shape or form. It could be as scheduled, or some administrators feel could be with a reduced schedule, etc.

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Sad news came earlier this week for the Merrimack High School hockey program, as popular assistant coach Gary Moore passed away. Moore had been the goalie coach and basically the right hand man for Tomahawks head coach Dan Belliveau. He was the same when Belliveau coached at Souhegan for several years.

Moore lost a battle with cancer that took him away from most of the season after the first of the year.

Belliveau posted a tribute to Moore on social media:

“We lost a great friend and hockey mentor, who will be dearly missed by the hockey community and everyone that knew him.

“He was known to many as Gary the Goalie, but to me and all the other coaches and all the kids who were fortunate enough to have been together on his teams over the years, he will always be known as Coach Gary.”

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Milford will be looking for yet another boys head soccer coach, as Olf Mouyaka, despite outstanding success (9-4-3 regular season), won’t be returning.

Mouyaka had things going in the right direction after a few years of struggles for the Spartans. They earned a first round bye before falling to Bow 4-0 in the Division II quarterfinals.

Athletic director Marc Maurais has posted the position, and also has varsity vacancies for boys and girls cross country.

Those interested in the positions should go to www.milfordk12.org, go to the human resources tab and click on employment. Any questions contact Maurais at marc.maurais@milfordk12.org.

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