Legion Collegiate athletic director steps down, is replaced by Winthrop Hall of Famer
Rock Hill’s newest public charter school has a new athletic director.
Legion Collegiate Academy announced Friday that Winthrop University’s former men’s soccer coach Rich Posipanko will take over the position.
Posipanko will replace Strait Herron, who is stepping away to focus on his role as head football coach and a newly added position as director of player development, the school said in a press release. The personnel change marks the end of an arduous three-plus-year AD tenure for Herron, who established the Legion program from scratch in 2019.
“Having more responsibilities at home with my family and, especially my son who has special needs, I have decided to place my main focus back to my main love of coaching football, while having more time with family,” Herron said in a statement.
Legion Collegiate, which first opened in the fall of 2019, is a dual enrollment charter school that focuses on athletics and academics. Student-athletes, in grades 9-12, split their time between high school and college-level classes, and the athletic field.
The school resided on a temporary site off Bird Street in Rock Hill until students and faculty were able to move in February 2021 onto its permanent property, an 83-acre site on Long Meadow Road off S.C. Highway 901.
“I am thrilled to embark on this new chapter in Legion’s legacy,” principal Julie Marshall said in a statement. “Rich’s expertise in navigating both on and off the field will facilitate the continued growth of our programs and propel our Lancers to the next level.”
Posipanko, a four-time Big South Coach of the Year, was the men’s head soccer coach at Winthrop for 27 years before retiring in 2015. He led the Eagles to five Big South Conference championships and six NCAA Tournament appearances.
During Posipanko’s Winthrop career, he produced 159 All-Conference players, 67 All-Region selections, 14 All-Americans and four Olympic Team players, according to the university.
Before Winthrop, Posipanko was the head coach at Longwood University in Virginia. He ended his 37-year coaching career with 392 victories.
He was later inducted into the Winthrop Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.
Shortly after his retirement, Posipanko continued to play a role in the area’s soccer programs. In 2016, he went on to serve as director of operations for the professional soccer team Charlotte Independence.
“I am a big believer in forming good community partnerships and will be looking to build on existing relationships while forming new ones,” Posipanko said in the release. “As a department, we will do things the right way with good athletes, good students and good people. Success will take care of itself if we all believe in these characteristics.”
Herron was officially named Legion’s first athletic director in the winter of 2019. And it was an eventful three years for Legion athletics: The Rock Hill public charter school, between 2019 and 2022, won state championships and sent troves of high school athletes to college, but it also battled substantial alienation from the community and the state — to the point that it joined a lawsuit against the South Carolina High School League in 2020 and even broke away from the SCHSL in 2021.
“It was just really, really difficult to maneuver through the South Carolina High School League,” Herron told The Herald in May 2021, a few days after Legion exited the SCHSL and joined the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association as a provisional member. “And the NCISAA, they’re just so organized. It’s a smaller league and I think that they would have our best interest at heart.”
Before arriving at Legion, Herron was South Pointe High School’s head football coach and led the team to five state championships in seven years.
“I am very thankful to LCA for giving me a chance to fulfill the first ever professional goal I desired, which was to be a high school athletic director and football coach,” he said. “I believe the program is on solid ground and I am confident that our administration will create a plan that ensures it becomes the best that it can be.”
Alex Zietlow contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 2, 2022 at 8:37 AM.
