Longtime Sterling House athletic director plans to retire

STRATFORD — Bill O’Brien, town councilman for the ninth district, is retiring from his full-time position as the Senior Director of Athletics and Facilities at the Sterling House Community Center after more than 40 years of service.

The community center, which offers preschool, after-school, summer day camp and athletics programs, among other services, has been a town fixture since 1932, when Cordelia Sterling donated her mansion to the people of Stratford.

O’Brien has had a long history of involvement with Sterling House, beginning as a volunteer in the 1980s.

The soccer program — in which his own children played — was in need of coaches and, despite knowing nothing about soccer, O’Brien took on the job

He ended up volunteering, primarily as a soccer and basketball coach, for 15 years.

“I just liked it so much that, when my kids were done playing, I stayed with it,” O’Brien said.

His volunteer work would eventually lead him to a job with Sterling House.

In 1990, when he was asked what he would like to be doing in five years during a review, O’Brien said he remembered responding that he would like to be athletic director at Sterling House.

Nearly five years later, the position opened up and O’Brien went for it. He started working at the community center part-time, but within a year he became a full-time employee, also taking on the role of camp director.

In his position, O’Brien was responsible for managing the center’s three main athletics programs for children and youth: soccer, basketball and lacrosse.

O’Brien helped to create the teams, organize their schedules, oversee coach trainings and scheduled referees to attend each game.

Over the years, O’Brien also watched the program evolve.

A new computer system helped to optimize scheduling, which was previously done by hand, and a volleyball clinic for girls entering sixth, seventh and eighth grades was recently started.

While O’Brien said he enjoyed every part of his tenure at the Sterling House — which allowed him to engage with the community and even brought him to Stanford University to accept an award from the Positive Coaching Alliance on behalf of the community center — his favorite part was the relationships he was able to develop.

“The best thing of all is the lifelong friends I’ve made,” O’Brien said.

Though O’Brien is stepping back from his role at Sterling, he is not stepping away, he said.

He will continue in the full-time position until someone is hired to replace him and, after that, he envisions working there part-time for five to 10 hours a week and maybe taking up soccer coaching again.

“I don’t think I’ll ever officially retire from here,” O’Brien said. .