Swampscott’s Kristin Hughes is interim AD for Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools

UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS – Kristin Hughes, former women’s basketball coach at Case Western Reserve University and Colgate University, has been named interim athletic director for the Cleveland Heights-University Heights schools.A one-year contract for Hughes, 38, was approved Monday by the CH-UH Board of Education. Her prorated salary of $92,535 was effective Tuesday.She replaces Tom Hill, who resigned for personal reasons in late September.”I have spent my entire professional career in the field of athletics, and I’m highly motivated to begin,” Hughes told the board. “I have always approached athletics with the thought that it’s a privilege to be involved, and I promise I will approach this position in the same way.”The past three years, Hughes has served as head women’s basketball coach at Colgate, an NCAA Division I college in Hamilton, NY. Her team advanced to the championship round of the Patriot League tournament in 2004-05 and to the league semifinals the past two seasons.From 1993-2004, Hughes was head women’s basketball coach at CWRU. Her 2001-02 team was ranked in the Division III top 25 the entire season and was the school’s first ever to be ranked nationally.Hughes also served as interim athletic director at CWRU in 2003-04.”It’s very important that we create a culture and environment in which student-athletes can experience success both academically and athletically,” she said. “We need to create an environment and culture in which we are developing better people.”Still, winning is important, Hughes said.”I would like to think that every team can begin every season thinking they have a viable chance of winning a championship,” she said.Hughes lives in University Heights, where she resided for seven years while she coached at CWRU. She organized and directed summer basketball clinics for the Cleveland Rockers, formerly of the WNBA, in the late 1990s.Hughes, who grew up in Swampscott, was a standout athlete at Elms College in Chicopee, where she earned a bachelor’s degree and was inducted into the athletic hall of fame last year. She has a master’s degree from Smith College in Northampton.