Ryan Schartz heads into his office to start the day. It’s his 24th year at Fort Osage, and his time with the district is coming to an end after accepting a new position. Schartz looks over his schedule and starts the day.
After working for the Fort Osage School District for 24 years, and eight years as Activities Director since 2016, Ryan Schartz recently announced he accepted a position as the head Football coach and Activities Director at Oak Grove High School. Schartz felt he had to weigh his choice to leave, but ultimately feels he made the right decision.
“It was one that I pondered quite a bit, it was one of those that was very difficult for me, my wife helped me with the decision as she always does, but the thing I think that was the biggest factor was that my own children attend the district [Oak Grove] that I’ve accepted this job,” Schartz said, “I get to be in the same building as my own kids, and that was appealing to me, and obviously getting back into coaching after 8 years, which I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but ultimately it was my own children.”
Before becoming the school’s activities director, Schartz was head Football coach for Fort Osage High School. While coaching, he successfully brought the school its first state championship in 2015. Fort Osage Alumni now NFL Miami Dolphins quarterback Skylar Thompson looks back fondly to his memories from then.
“I have a lot of good memories with him,” Thompson said, “obviously winning the state championship was the ultimate memory, you know just the amount of time and effort we put into accomplishing that goal, that’s all we wanted to do because it had never been done here before.”
Schartz had also been previously recognized as the top football coach on the Missouri side of the metro-area by the Kansas City Chiefs Ambassadors in 2009, after leading the team to a 10-0 regular season, and 13-1 in all after falling during the state championship. Senior Xander Shepard found him to be a major encouragement to explore sports.
“He was a really big encouragement to why I played Football,” Shepard said, “because him and my dad were buddies, so he was the one that really encouraged me to play Football.”
Schartz started at Fort in 2000 teaching History, but the ultimate reason for his choice to leave came down to be closer to his children. Schartz believes he was still very close to Fort Osage while the athletic director.
“I spent a lot of time around Fort Osage kids, and a lot of times I felt like a surrogate father to a lot of them,” Schartz said, “but I felt like at the end of my career it’d be a great way to finish it with my children.”
As the day ends, Schartz steps back out of his office. As he walks out of the building, he passes the murals around the school. While it’s sad to leave the school district after so long, he looks forward to seeing his kids where he once saw murals.
