Hayden LaMere, a 2010 Tupper Lake graduate, says he’s always bled the Red and Black — the Lumberjacks official colors — and has been very heavily involved with sports.

“I was huge into football, basketball and I played baseball,” he said on Wednesday. “Being a Lumberjack is everything to me and sports are a big part of my life.”

LaMere hopes to make an impact on the Tupper Lake’s athletic department, the same way he said impacted him. LaMere recently took the position as the new athletic director for the school district. The position was previously held by Dan Brown, who had been the athletic director in the district since 2017. Brown will remain with the school district as a psychologist.

For LaMere, his new role will also include being the school district’s dean of students. The dual role has become more common in smaller school districts in the area, such as Lake Placid.

“The dean of students is dealing with discipline for the most part,” LaMere said. “So working together with our new principal, Chris Savage, to deal with any discipline or infractions in the school.”

LaMere has been with the Tupper Lake school district in various roles, ever since he graduated from St. Lawrence University in 2014. When he started working as a full-time teacher in the school district in 2021, he began to envision becoming the school’s director of athletics.

“I didn’t think it’d be this soon, but I’m really excited to be here,” LaMere said. “Being a graduate of Tupper Lake makes it even better. I’ve gone through all the sports programs here and the sports programs here are a lot of who I am. It’s cool to come full circle.”

For the past few years, LaMere has coached modified football, junior varsity basketball and varsity golf. While LaMere won’t coach modified football or JV basketball, since there won’t be a JV program this season, he still plans on coaching the golf team, which won the Section X Golf Team Championship in May.

“It’s a tough one to give up,” he said. “I’m going to be around the football team this fall, but obviously more as an athletic director role and just try to be with the varsity team a little bit more. This group of seniors, right now, is the first group that I coached when I started coaching football when they were seventh graders. They should have a pretty good team and it should be nice to be around them a little bit more.”

As the JV basketball coach, LaMere also split time as an assistant with the varsity team, alongside head coach Brian Bennett, helping them win a Section X, Class C title this past season. Since the JV team was cut, making way for just two teams — a modified and varsity — LaMere says he’ll remain with the team.

“It actually works out perfect because I know can just come and go with Brian and we have a good thing going with the varsity program anyway. We’ve always practiced together and did things together, so I’ll pretty much be in the same role with basketball as I had been.”

While LaMere is still new to the job and the fall sports teams haven’t started practicing yet — except for football, which started on Monday — he said the transition has been pretty smooth, so far since he knows all of the coaches.

“I’ve talked with old coaches of mine too, who had actually been in this role, as well just to get some advice from them, that part makes it easy,” he said. “I’ve coached three seasons here, so I know how things go for the most part.”

LaMere said at this point, he’s just trying to learn as much as he can about the job.

“I’m hoping I can just provide to my coaches and the parents what they need,” he said. “I work really hard to try and keep people happy and this is definitely a role where it takes a lot of trying to make people happy. I’m hoping I can bring a good work ethic, a positive attitude and my passion for Tupper Lake and the rest will take care of itself.”