Marble Falls grad named Cisco College athletic director

CAPTION: Amanda (Thomas) LeCroy, a 2014 Marble Falls High School graduate, is using her master’s degree in sports administration as the new Cisco College athletic director. Courtesy photo

Marble Falls High School graduate Amanda (Thomas) LeCroy is the new athletic director at Cisco College, a two-year community college.

LeCroy, who served as the assistant athletic director last year, was approved to take the top spot May 18 by the college’s Board of Regents. She will remain the women’s cross country head coach, a role she has had for the last two years, and serves as a volunteer softball coach on the staff of her husband, head coach Cody LeCroy.

“I always had that plan of being in sports as long as I could and coaching as long as I could,” she said. “And then after we (Jonesboro High School) won the (2024 Class 1A) state title, (we) came over to Cisco. I started in the classroom (teaching second grade in Eastland), I enjoyed it. But it wasn’t like coaching for me. When I got the opportunity to come over to Cisco as the head cross country coach and assistant athletic director and on top of having (daughter) Dakota, it was a perfect little line for me to take at that point in a career switch, because I still get to be involved in sports. I’m learning a lot about all the other sports just from being in this position, which has been great.”

LeCroy, who graduated from Marble Falls in 2014, earned a bachelor’s degree in major sports and leisure in 2017 and a master’s degree is sports administration in 2019 both from Midwestern University where she also was an all-conference catcher and then joined the coaching staff for five years. She said she realized early on that she wanted to remain in sports but wanted options, especially once she became a mother.

“This was the way that I wanted to go,” she said. “So I kind of had an idea. I just knew I wanted to stay in sports.”

She will oversee seven sports and has called the sports administration side “an adventure.”

“Not a lot of people, not a lot of women, get put into this role as an athletic director, especially at the college level,” the former Lady Mustang said. “So I’m the first female athletic director that we’ve had at Cisco College I believe. So one, that’s an attraction to just be able to be in that position, in that honor of being in that position. But two, being a supporting person for our coaches and student-athletes – I think that’s a big deal. I like to help people. So coming in and growing and continuing to grow this program in the right direction as Dr. (Jerry) Dodson had been doing.”

Dodson retired as the athletic director.

“I learned a lot from him,” she said.

Cisco student-athletes pursue playing opportunities elsewhere after one or two years.

“I think the juco level is really a unique situation,” she said. “There’s not a lot of opportunities on the girls side outside of that four years to continue playing, so they get more degrees towards the end and ready for life. The boys not so much because there are still opportunities for them to play. But at judo, all of our kids are striving to get to the next level. So it’s what can we do to push these kids out after they graduate? Our coaches do a phenomenal job of that already. But that’s been the cool part to really see our coaches push these kids out to the next level and help them get to the next level.”

LeCroy said she has been meeting with her coaches to gather more information on the needs of each of their programs, their wish lists and other tidbits.

“Making processes a little bit easier,” she said. “Just putting processes in place for things to be easier when they’re getting here. So when they get here, we can just jump right into sports. Now it’s time to play, now it’s time to perform, to come out and put everything on the field and play hard.”

As for the Jonesboro softball program, the Lady Eagles won their third consecutive state title by defeating Brookeland 6-5 in a come-from-behind victory. When they won their first, most of the members were underclassmen.

“It’s a good group of kids,” LeCroy said. “Those kids already knew how to win. One thing that we focused on … was learning how to compete when you were down. It was hard, it was not easy. Learning how to compete when you’re down or when there’s a better pitcher on the mound than you and figuring out a way to win and a way to score and a way to compete back, so I would definitely say that’s probably the biggest thing that I’ve seen that we might have left on those girls.”

The new athletic director plans to follow the same plan when it comes to interacting with the Cisco student athletes. She noted she and many of the staff members and coaches are highly accessible daily. She and her husband host team meals at their home, following the examples of other Cisco coaches and their families. Those gatherings have meant as much to the Cisco families that used to host as they do to the athletes who get to experience a home-cooked meal.

LeCroy calls it “creating that family atmosphere.”

“The people here are wonderful, so it’s really easy to connect with kids,” she said. “Our students are amazing. We go to every single home game, we’ve gone to away games, we eat in the cafeteria every single day. The majority of our coaches eat in the cafeteria, so it’s really easy to connect with kids because we’re seeing them outside of the field and outside of their sport. So that’s one really easy way to connect is us being present and us being around and being at the events. A lot of these kids have that situation where they’re in a spot that they are uncertain of, so it’s easy to relate to that aspect as well. At the end of the day, I think we can all relate because we love sports, we’re here for academics, but sports is still what we’re all chasing.”