50 | JULY 27 • 2023
SPORTS
F
rankel Jewish Academy
has a new athletic
director. But he isn’t
new to one of the area’s only
Jewish high schools.
Robert Walker has replaced
Rick Dorn, who was Frankel’s
AD for nine years. Dorn is the
new AD at Dearborn Fordson
High School.
Walker started his new job
this month after Joe Bernstein,
a Frankel coach, served as a
fill-in AD from May 19 to July
12.
This is Walker’s second
stint at Frankel. He was the
director of student services, a
social studies teacher, and the
boys and girls tennis coach for
three seasons from 2009-12.
“I’ve had some of the
best moments in my career
teaching, coaching and
doing administrative work at
Frankel, so I’m excited to be
back,” he said.
“I wrote my doctoral
dissertation about coaching in
high school. Now I’ll have a
chance to put that experience
to good use.”
The title of Walker’s
dissertation was “Lived
Experiences of Female
High School Tennis
Coaches Who Coach Male
Players: A Descriptive,
Phenomenological Study.”
Walker said he can also
draw on his experience as a
de facto part-time athletic
director at the small schools
where he’s worked.
Creating Frankel’s sports
schedules around Shabbat and
Jewish holidays won’t be a new
experience for Walker because
of his stint as the Frankel boys
and girls tennis coach.
“I’m used to it,” he said.
“I remember hoping tennis
matches ended by 6 o’clock on
a Friday. One went right down
to the wire: 5:56 p.m.”
Walker said he found out
about the open Frankel AD
job while doing a job search.
He was relocating to the
Detroit area and looking for a
job in athletics, and he came
across the job posting on the
Indeed job search website.
That was in early May. By
the middle of the month, the
42-year-old Rochester resident
was hired by Frankel.
A perfect storm of
opportunities provided by the
Fordson job opened the door
for Dorn to leave Frankel.
He’ll now have a much
shorter job commute. Fordson
is 20 minutes from Dorn’s
home in Woodhaven. His job
commute to Oakland County
the last 17 years took him
more than an hour.
Dorn was the athletic
director at Waterford Mott
High School for two years and
the Waterford School District
for six years before coming to
Frankel, which is based at the
Jewish Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit in West
Bloomfield.
The Fordson job also is
an opportunity for Dorn
to return to a public school
with his retirement and state
pension not too many years
away.
“I never would have left
Frankel unless an opportunity
like this came up,” he said.
“I had an incredible time
at Frankel. I built fantastic
relationships with students,
faculty and staff that I will
have forever. It was a now-or-
never decision to leave.”
Dorn said he’s happy that
Frankel athletes achieved a
level of success they had never
reached during his tenure as
AD, but he’s most proud of the
strong relationship he built
for Frankel with the Michigan
High School Athletic
Association.
The MHSAA routinely
makes state competition
accommodations for Frankel
athletes because of scheduling
conflicts with Shabbat and
Jewish holidays, “which
provides great experiences for
our athletes,” Dorn said.
Walker was the
superintendent and head of
school of the middle school
at the Greenspire School
in Traverse City since 2020
before coming to Frankel.
He previously was head of
the middle school at Sycamore
School in Indianapolis in
2019-20, principal and
director of the Herberger
Young Scholars Academy of
Arizona State University from
2012-19, and an elementary
and middle school teacher
at Japhet School in Clawson
from 2007-09 prior to his first
stint at Frankel.
He also has college
teaching experience at Grand
Canyon University and
Robert Walker replaces Rick Dorn,
who ‘had an incredible time’ during
his nine years at the high school.
Meet the New
Frankel Jewish
Academy
Athletic Director
STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ROBERT JOHNSON
New Frankel athletic director Robert
Walker was the school’s boys and
girls tennis coach from 2009-12.