With an on-again, off-again hiring freeze placed on the Wake County Public School System, this summer has provided area athletics directors with more obstacles than usual when trying to fill coaching positions.

With only a month to go before school begins, almost all programs have yet to fill voids within their athletic departments.

Athletics directors whose schools can't add teachers are finding out that the pool of candidates becomes more shallow when prospective coaches learn there are no teaching jobs available.

While that trend is not surprising considering coaches who do not teach at the school only make about $2,300 a year, it's hurting hiring efforts like those of Cary High Athletics Director Kurt Glendenning, who still needs to fill his school's opening at varsity baseball coach.

"We posted [the position] like we were supposed to and we've got some really fine candidates [who] have applied for that but they certainly need a teaching position to go along with it, and we don't have any," Glendenning said. "That has really narrowed down our ability to find some really fine candidates because we don't have any teaching positions."

Coaching vacancies happen every year and for all sorts of reasons, whether they be from resignations, firings, family relocation or career changes.

In order to fill some of these, some local athletics directors have found that one way to circumvent the hiring freeze is to promote from within the school or program.

Panther Creek Athletics Director Todd Schuler used this tactic in June when he promoted men's basketball assistant Travis Chapman to head coach after L.J. Hepp -- the 2008 Tri-Eight Coach of the Year -- resigned to join the staff at the University of South Carolina.

"With Travis, we had a very capable assistant. Travis had been an assistant for years now and we're very confident in his abilities," Schuler said. "That was an ideal situation for us ... He's a very capbable teacher and a very capable coach."

Schuler also had to do this with men's soccer, the sport that he coached last year in addition to women's soccer and his athletics director (AD) duties. Unable to find a replacement, Schuler said he will re-assume the position this fall.

Another common avenue is for a school to hire a Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) teacher from a different school, typically one at an elementary school.

This is how Apex AD Del Phillips plans to replace women’s lacrosse coach Jess Pineo, who led the Cougars to each of the last three state championships and recently moved back home to her home state of New York.

Although Phillips could not name the recommended person until the proper paperwork is processed through WCPSS, he said if hired, the new coach will continue teaching at the same school but coach at Apex.

Glendenning is reluctantly looking at his dwindling options as the hiring freeze continues to spurn potential candidates' interest. Despite getting widespread interest in the job vacated by former baseball coach Patrick Parr for undisclosed reasons, Cary's hands are tied as to who can fill the position.

"We're going to have to find someone within our school or within [WCPSS] to fill those positions, so we may not get the person that we really wanted for longevity reasons — someone who is going to be around for a long time," Glendenning said. "We'll just have to fill it with the best person we can."

Some vacancies have failed to draw much interest this year, like two assistant football coaching jobs at Green Hope. Even though they are the only two openings that AD Mickey Bissette has had to try to fill this summer, neither has been filled.

"Trying to get someone who's on staff will be our first preference and, of course, we haven't," Bissette said. "I think that the amount of applicants has slowed down because people know the schools aren't hiring as much."

Schuler also had to hire assistant football coaches, filling two of the three openings with non-faculty members. The third remains open.

"We've had to look at non-faculty moreso than in the past," Schuler said.

When the school system announced this year that it was not going to renew teachers with expiring contracts — which includes first-year teachers and teachers who had retired and came back to teach — it placed some coaches in a career limbo.

Unsure of whether or not their teaching position would still be there when the hiring freeze thawed, some coaches were forced to take a job elsewhere — or risk not getting paid at all. It also scared some potential coaches away from Wake County jobs.

"We had a couple of candidates who were well-qualified for the position, but when the hiring freeze was lifted we were only able offer them a temporary contracts," Schuler said. "And since they were both tenured teachers in other systems, they weren't OK with assuming the risk that comes with being a first-year teacher in Wake County."

Of the ADs contacted, only Del Phillips lost personnel because of this problem when a position in the physical education department was taken away. The cut was made to the newest member of the department, who was also an assistant football coach.

"He was placed over at Sanderson High School — the bad thing about that is he was a former Apex student [and] played here," Phillips said. "He moved back here [from Sanderson] when he took the job here and went here for a year and a half and got moved back this summer."

Schuler said he too encountered that predicament this summer, but was able to re-hire coaches.

"Those were situations where the teachers had tenure in other counties and had just finished their first year with us," Schuler said.

Phillips, who added that he's made a recommendation for a new varsity cheerleading coach, said this summer has influenced how he'll go about his duties the rest of the year.

"The thing I see from the money standpoint, is to be real cautious with spending," Phillips said. "It's not that we've had to do away with anything that we normally do with monies towards any sport, It's just a matter of we have to be real conservative and real cautious with what we're doing."

Calls made to Holly Springs and Fuquay-Varina high schools were not immediately returned.