KINGSTON — It’s March, and the Kingston High School athletic department — currently consisting officially of one man, planning athletic director Scott McKay — is in a hiring crunch.

The school is set to open in September with what North Kitsap School District officials have determined a full slate of athletic programs, but not one of those teams has a head coach yet.

And the road to hiring the 31 total coaches could get bumpy if the NKSD’s current staffing philosophy for the 2007-2008 school year, which doesn’t provide for the hiring of any new full-time teachers, remains.

“We’re hearing from the district that we’re not going to be able to connect any of the coaching positions with teaching or counseling (positions) and that’s pretty tough,” McKay said.

If that continues to be the case, the school will be in dire need of coaches stepping up from the North End community.

It’s not always as such, but typically coaching and teaching positions go hand in hand. Without any teaching posts to offer in conjunction with a coaching spot, the KHS applicant pool from outside the North End may be limited.

“It doesn’t matter how big the pool is, if they all need a teaching position tied to it and we can’t offer it,” he added. “If all our candidates need to teach we’re in an interesting place at that point.”

If the district does reach that point, there may or may not be flexibility to create full-time teaching spots to go with coaching positions, however, much like the overall staffing picture, NKSD director of student support services Gregg Epperson — who will oversee the hiring process — wasn’t clear.

“At this point in time, I can’t answer that question, we’re just going to see how the applicant pool is for each position,” he said. “Ideally we’d prefer to have people who are working in the building as our coaches … we’ll look at that if we’re required to look at that.”

Either way, the situation should be known soon as a KHS hiring committee plans to interview candidates for the school’s head football coach March 15 or 16, McKay said.

“Then in the two weeks after that, it’d be nice to get head soccer, head volleyball and head cross country … by spring break,” McKay said.

“You don’t have to hire everyone right away,” said North Kitsap athletic director Trish Olson of the full slate of programs including winter and spring sports. “Of course, that would be ideal, but it doesn’t have to happen to get the ball rolling.”

The ball is already rolling in a way, as McKay said he anticipated “handful” of in-district coaches who will likely be moving to Kingston High School and coaching in September.

Providing even more of a cliffhanger in that regard, NKSD teachers won’t know exactly — though they do have an idea of what building — where they will be for next school year until the high school registration process commences and is tallied later in April.