ELKHART — After 29 years of coaching, Josh Fletcher has finally found the role — and the place — in which he wants to finish his career. Back in his hometown, Fletcher is wasting no time in his new position as Elkhart High School’s athletic director.
He was abundantly clear, as of July 15, that he’s in Elkhart County to stay. Fletcher’s priority is making sure those he serves in this new role feel the same.
“We pride ourselves on really good communication, so we want to make sure we are communicating with the public, parents, alumni and just people in the community,” Fletcher said. “We want to be involved in the community. Being present in the community is going to go a long way in building that support, that trust and that desire for parents to keep or bring their kids to Elkhart.”
Since being approved by the Elkhart Community Schools (ECS) board in May, Fletcher used the following two months to get re-familiarized with an area he hadn’t truly called home in decades. Despite being born in Elkhart and even attending Pinewood Elementary School, Fletcher’s family moved to Bristol, and he graduated high school from Northridge.
In the years since his 1995 graduation, Fletcher got his undergraduate degree from Goshen College, where he was a three-sport athlete in cross country, track and field, and baseball. In the 21st century, Fletcher has experience as the head track & field and cross country coach at Northridge High School — his alma mater which he led to a 2004 IHSAA state championship — Angola High School and Trine University. He was also the head track and field coach at Penn from 2014-18, during which time the Kingsmen brought home state titles in three events.
Fletcher’s reacquaintance with Elkhart has included a lot of conversations with former co-athletic directors Brian Buckley and current girls volleyball head coach Jacquie Rost, a meeting with Phyllis Tubbs — the namesake of the Lions’ Tubbs Gymnasium — attending the Wolf and Bringle Award ceremony, and a tour of the town from Elkhart Common Council member Tonda Hines, who took Fletcher to parts of the city he had never visited and giving him a new perspective on the community for which he’ll now directly work.
Fletcher’s No. 1 goal for the 2026-27 school year is to increase athletic participation at both the middle school and high school level. He said the best way for Elkhart athletics to be successful is to give its coaches all the necessary tools, whether that means financial support, increased resources or anything in between.
Fletcher and ECS are also in the interview process for the hire of a new assistant athletic director, a position that did not previously exist during Buckley and Rost’s tenure as co-athletic directors prior to Fletcher’s hire. ECS is also in the process of hiring an athletic director for middle school and elementary school sports, which comes at the same time as ECS’s decision to pause all elementary school sports for at least one academic year, effective July 15.
The Lions’ only two team-sport sectional championships in the 2025-26 academic year were in softball and unified track & field, and despite stiff competition from their Northern Indiana Conference (NIC) cohorts and fellow area rivals, Fletcher is confident his efforts will lead to success sooner rather than later.
“We want student-athletes to choose Elkhart; we want them to choose it for our great coaches and our great administrators, and we want to win championships,” Fletcher said. “It really excited me to be involved with all this transition and change. A lot of people see it as a negative, I see it as an opportunity to create a winning culture and continue to make Elkhart attractive.”
Kyle Smedley is a sports reporter at the South Bend Tribune. Contact him via email at ksmedley@usatodayco.com or follow him on X @KyleMSmedley.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: New Elkhart Athletic Director Josh Fletcher emphasizing community, loyalty
Reporting by Kyle Smedley, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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By Kyle Smedley, South Bend Tribune | USA TODAY Network
