Gretna East will have a new activities director (AD) starting next school year who brings with him extensive coaching and administrative experience. Coming from Grand Island Northwest High School, Matthew Fritsche will replace Ryan Garder as AD in August.
Fritsche has served as AD at Northwest since 2020, but prior to that, he coached collegiate women’s basketball for eight years, and before his collegiate coaching career, he coached the Bellevue West girls’ basketball team from 2002-12. While there, he led them to three Class A State Championships titles: 2007, 2009 and 2010.
“My family and I are excited to join Gretna Public Schools,” Fritsche said in a press release from the school district. “I am incredibly grateful for the last five years at Northwest High School, and am excited for the opportunity to learn and grow while serving Gretna Public Schools.”
The school’s current administrative team is also looking forward to working with Fritsche.
“We’re excited to welcome Matt to Gretna East,” Principal Chad Jepsen said in an email to the district. “His leadership and experience will be invaluable in continuing our success and fostering a positive culture.”
Fritsche hopes to do just that and has a vision for enriching the Griffin athletic experience.
“My priorities for the activities and athletics programs at Gretna East would be to serve the athletes, participants and coaches,” he said, “to do whatever needed done to ensure that young people have a great experience while participating in, what I believe is, ‘the other half of education.’”
While August is six months away, he is already ready to fill the role.
“I will work really hard to get to know our students, staff, parents and all of the people we serve,” Fritsche said. “From there, I will assess the needs of our program in tandem with the admin team, coaches, and student participants to work on implementing anything we believe will assist in the experience our young people enjoy in activities. I promise that my door will always be open to anyone I serve, and I am incredibly excited to get to know all of the folks that make Gretna East and Gretna Public Schools such a special place.”
While Fritsche will be the new AD, Garder isn’t going anywhere; he has been named the school’s newest assistant principal, which will fulfill a lifelong goal. Since he was a student at Hastings College (2010-14), Garder knew he wanted to impact students on an administrative level but when the school opened, he had to jump on another opportunity to get involved.
“Before we split into two buildings, there was an administrative job, and I applied, and I was honored to get it,” he said. “It was for activities, and part of me had to come to terms with that myself because of my draw to the classroom. Admittedly, activities director was not my dream job, but I’m so grateful to have done it the last two and a half years because it has shown me so many aspects of the high school, which a lot of it involves activities.”
Before taking the AD job, Garder was a math teacher for nine years and now finds himself being pulled back towards the academic side of things rather than activities.
“The classroom is where my heart always has been,” Garder said. “As an assistant principal, I will work more with students in the capacity of academics rather than activities. My passion is that if we can have extremely high-quality instruction, then we have learning at high levels, and that’s truly what fires me up.”
While he is excited to take on the role of assistant principal, he is glad for the experience of being the school’s first AD.
“The holistic experience, to be able to start from a blueprint that’s completely blank, to design a school, that is an experience that very few people ever get in an administrative role,” he said.
Looking forward to his new position, Fritsche expressed his admiration for the foundation that has been built in the last two years.
“From where I sit, Gretna East is off to a great start,” he said. “I honestly don’t know of changes that need made. It appears as though the staff, admin and of course student participants have done some really great things for a great place in a short amount of time.”
With Fritsche stepping in as the new AD, the school’s leadership team will now have five administrators as Garder will join Jami Ewer and Michael Tomjack to become the school’s third assistant principal. Working alongside them and Jepsen, current Assistant AD, Kyle Moore, will remain in his current role.
“We’re a pretty tight-knit group,” Garder said. “Anytime you bring in somebody else, that’s just a different collaborative dynamic that we’ll have to figure out. We’re excited for Mr. Fritsche.”
