By Quentin Sauvageau ‘26
Change is in the air at Beverly High School, especially in the athletic director role. Eleven months have passed since Ryan Wood became the most recent athletic director of BHS. While Mr. Wood may be better known to some students as an assistant principal, he has now given up watching the halls to watching the fences. The role of athletic director is a broad one, so who is Mr. Wood and what does he do at BHS?
“We set the schedules for interscholastic sports. We provide and coordinate transportation for those particular sports practices,” Wood Clarified.
Taking a lot of stress off of coach’s backs, Mr. Wood cooperates with coaches for scheduling, transportation, and complicated field preparations as Beverly has just opened a new and improved Forti Field.
“I think handling the two fields is kind of a luxury,” Wood exclaimed. “At the end of the season, we’ve had enough games on Forti Field to kind of see what our priority is for that field.”
Mr. Wood will juggle the two facilities (Hurd Stadium and Forti Field) as he has juggled most things in his new job and his home life.
“I’m a dad, I coach my daughter’s sports but the challenging part in any sort of role like this is you’ve got to find balance,” Wood said.
Mr. Wood may be new to being an athletic director but not new to finding a balance. Wood has worked in education for twenty years and has a wide array of experiences.
“I started as a para and worked up to an MCAS tutor, then finally was able to be an English teacher and that was at Malden Catholic for 10 years.” Wood stated. “I kind of rolled the dice on taking a job at Nashoba Technical High School in regards to being in administration.”
From a Catholic school to a vocational school to now a public school, Mr. Wood seems here to stay as he took a job in Beverly knowing he wanted to be closer to home.
“When the pandemic hit I knew I wanted to be a little bit closer to home,” Wood explained.
The short-term involves finding a balance between Hurd Stadium and Forti Field. In the long term, Wood could help students by adding Boy’s volleyball and Girl’s flag football with enough student interest.
“Every day that’s what I want to be able to get across to people: can I be helpful to you?” Wood notes. “Can we make sense of a situation that might be confusing? That’s always been a mantra for me”
We look forward to working with Mr. Wood in the future, and continue to wish him best of luck in this position.
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