RIVER FALLS – River Falls High School Activities and Athletics Director Rollie Hall spent his last days in his role the last week of June after spending 18 years in the position and 32 altogether in education. Hall spent the first 14 years of his career at Lake Holcombe, where he taught physical education, coached the high school football team and spent one year as the school’s athletics and activities director before arriving in River Falls in 2003.

“The biggest change was the size of the schools,” Hall said. “Lake Holcombe was a very small school compared to River Falls. So there were sports here that I had not been involved in before such as gymnastics, swimming, and tennis. Some of those sports that are not in the smaller schools. Even though it was smaller, there are some things that are very similar in this job no matter what size school, so some of that was adjusted and easy to do,” said Hall.

Having worked in education since 1989, Hall saw many changes to the education system in western Wisconsin. Some were quite noticeable to him in his three-plus decades he has been working.

“When I first started as a coach, parental involvement was much less compared to now. In the old days it was a lot of dropping off the kids, the coaches just coaching and parents just going to the games, that's a lot different. Nowadays, parents are much more involved than they used to be,” said Hall.

A drastic change since 2003 is the increased opportunities for students’ activities and athletics at the high school level.

Hall said, “The focus on all sports, kids being involved in anything, you know, you have your traditional sports, you have football, basketball, baseball, for girls, volleyball, soccer, softball. There's a lot of other activities out there. And then there's other things that aren’t sports, you know, such as band and choir, powerlifting. So we've gotten a lot of kids involved in non-traditional activities. I think we did a good job of providing those opportunities. Like kids get to come up with their own things at times, and the leadership and other skills in developing that, and that's been a big change.”

Going into the same workplace every day for the past 18 years has been a rewarding and enjoyable experience for Hall. Above all else, it's the people Hall has been able to work with every day.

“I love the people I work with. My secretaries are just absolutely tremendous,” Hall said. “Suzy Halling, JoAnne Lin-