The Neptune Podcast

Todd Croy has spent almost 40 years in education, including the last 30 years at Whiteland Community High School in Indiana as a teacher, a coach, and for the last decade, as the assistant athletic director at Whiteland. Over the past few months, he’s experienced the high of watching his school in the 5A state championship football game as well as the low of watching a devastating tornado rake the...

By the time she was a 2nd grader, Dr. Angela Barton knew she wanted to become a classroom teacher. And while getting her degree in education, a college professor motivated her to eventually consider administration. She followed that path almost exactly: she became an elementary teacher, then an elementary principal, and today she serves as the Director of Curriculum and Assessment at the Canton In...

Dietrich Baker had been a middle school Social Studies and Language Arts teacher for about a dozen years when a simple visit to his daughter’s 2nd grade class had a profound effect on him. During that visit, he was amazed at how the teacher was so effectively integrating the use of technology with her very young elementary age students. That experience prompted Dietrich to make more use of technol...

When Scott Garvis was inducted into the Iowa High School Athletic Directors Association Hall of Fame earlier this year, it came as a surprise to no one who has worked with him during his nearly 20 year career. That’s because he has always focused on being a helper to other athletic directors and coaches -- no matter how busy he might have been. Although Garvis is no longer serving at a school, he’...

Dr. Scott Crawford has been leading the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference since 2007, and in his 16 years at the helm, the NAIA conference has grown to 14 member institutions in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, and Oklahoma. From the very beginning, Dr. Crawford has committed to giving KCAC student-athletes and their families a first-rate experience at every opportunity, so he and his team have foc...

When Clairinda Weatherwax started coaching part-time while attending Arizona State University, it was largely because she loved athletics and wanted to stay involved. But as happens to many people, she got the coaching bug -- and that led to 19 years leading teams. While coaching she wasn’t looking for a career in Athletic Administration, but a random email she received one day changed all of that...

For just over a decade, Mike Hall has been serving as the Commissioner of the Southern States Athletic Conference (NAIA). The SSAC has 13 member schools and has produced dozens of national championship teams in just about every sport you can name. But prior to joining the SSAC, Hall held just about every role you could have held in college athletics: starting in 1984 he coached golf, was an academ...

Dr. David Timbs is a well-respected educational leader who has a genuine passion for bringing all aspects of education together with technology. His 30-year career in education began as a classroom English teacher, eventually moved into administration, and then he became the Executive Director of Instructional Leadership with the Tennessee Department of Education. In 2008 he was selected as the Te...

Tony Holt is calling it a career and will be on to the next big thing after almost 30 years in education as a teacher, a coach, and for the last five years...as the principal at Fairview High School in Fairview, Oklahoma. His last year has had many highs, not the least of which was watching his kids win the Class A State Football Championship last December...Fairview's first state title in foo...

Early in his career as a high school coach, Terry Pirtle made the decision he was going to focus on being transformational with his teams -- as opposed to transactional. And over the 35 years that he’s been involved with high school athletics, the value in that approach has been on full display: As a head baseball coach his teams won three state championships, and in football teams he led as head...

Alma Galloway is a proud owner and operator of Maze Craze at Galloway Farm, which is located in Hallsboro, North Carolina. Although Alma did not grow up in a farming family, she embraced the farming life when she married her husband Jason, who is a fourth-generation farmer.  In the fall of 2011, she opened Maze Craze at Galloway Farm with Jason and their son Walker. Since its inception, Maze Craze...

When Evan Barnett began his career in the waterpark industry at age 16, he was 100% focused on attention to detail, dedication, and hard work every single day -- as he was cleaning toilets as part of the park services team. 24 years later, Barnett says it was that very first job that really laid the foundation for the rest of his career in the waterpark industry. Today he’s the President of the Py...

Chrissie Masi started her career as a special education teacher and then a 6th-grade English Language Arts teacher. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that the integration of technology into her classroom could be a powerful teaching tool, so she made the decision to stop teaching, move to California, and earn a Master’s degree in Instructional Technology. In 2012 she went back to New Jers...

In 2021 Rich Buzzell of Marshwood High School was named the recipient of the Robert Leahy Athletic Director Award in the state of Maine. The award is voted upon annually by high school athletic administrators across the state, and it’s intended to recognize the achievements and contributions of the very best athletic directors in Maine. Buzzell has been the athletic director at Marshwood for 20 ye...

When Stephanie Hee-Johnston first visited NRH2O Waterpark in North Richland Hills (TX) seeking a summer job, that’s really all she was doing: looking for a way to make money for three months. But while there she found out that NRH2O had a summer internship in marketing and she needed just such an opportunity for her Business Marketing Degree at the University of Texas. That internship eventually l...

Tony Black’s 34-year career in education has included a little bit of everything: classroom teacher, principal -- and for the last seven years, he’s served as the Executive Director of Technology for the Whitehouse ISD in Texas. Since his early days as a classroom teacher, Tony’s focus has been on kids, and that’s the approach he and his technology team take at WISD every day: students first.  But...

When Chuck and Kama Bozeman purchased land in the rolling hills of East Texas back in the 90’s, they had never heard of the term Agritainment. But today, YesterLand Farm draws in visitors from all across northeast Texas who are ready to spend a day enjoying the “farm meets carnival” atmosphere the Bozeman’s have created. On this episode of NNP, Kama Bozeman discusses the sometimes bumpy journey th...

For many years, Johnny Blevins was a superstar in the world of beverages, working in sales and marketing roles for companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. But as he and his wife Marci started a family, he started looking for something different that could utilize his experience and unique skill set. That led to the creation of the first Splash Kingdom Waterpark in 2006, and today the company has five...