One on One: Juniata AD Joe Skura

By rscaife
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Updated: October 3, 2017

Editors note: Recently, Hometown Sports Editor-in-Chief, Kenny Varner, sat down and talked to new Juniata County athletic director Joe Skura. We talked about his new position, his background and the future of Juniata County sports. This is one of a two part interview.

HS: Tell me a little about your background and how you got to become the new athletic director for Juniata.

JS: I am a certified English teacher. I went to college at Mount Aloysius College in Cresson for English Education but I’ve always had a love for sports. I went to Penn Cambria High School in Cresson and I played volleyball. If we never had a men’s team so I played in leagues and things like that. I have three sisters who were all into volleyball as well. So I got involved with their volleyball and ended up coaching my youngest sister. She is like 23 now but I coached her I junior high and all the way up to high school. I just went into the volleyball realm in coaching. I did about 15 years in volleyball coaching. Then about six years ago, I became the athletic director for Bishop Carroll, which is where I taught and coached volleyball. I got involved with being an athletic director because I was always the newspaper guy that covered athletics, followed athletics and love athletics.
Then I took over behind the scenes when the former AD left.
How I ended up here was at Bishop Carroll and it was a great experience I spent 10 years there and coached volleyball there all those years and I was really proud we had a team that my first year didn’t win too many games the year before and we won 10 games and went to the playoffs and hosted the first game at Bishop Carroll. The last four years I was there we were in the district championship class A title game.

HS: So where did you go from there?

JS: From there to the public school system, I spent last year at Mount Union High School until this Job came open. It was a job for Library/Athletic Director came open and I am certified in English, Library and Media so I had a background in athletics, so it was the perfect fit for me.

HS: What are your responsibilities for the job?

JS: My primary responsibility is the evening athletics. The two secretarys , Bobbie Bair out at East Juniata and Alyssa Adam is the secretary at Juniata were both the athletic directors last year but they are going to be secretaries and both are going to continue roles they had. That’s the only way it can be if it’s going to work being two schools in the same district.

HS: How has things been since you got here?

JS: I’m happy to be here! I have felt very welcomed by a lot of people into the district. I’m very impressed with the caliber of Athletics we have here and the kids on how polite and respectful they are and how totally dedicated the staff are to it’s athletics.

See next issue for part 2.