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The high school soccer regular season comes to a conclusion this week, and the state tournament brackets will be announced at the end of the weekend.
The Eldorado boys may be without their head coach for all remaining games.
Tom Hirschman has “been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation,” according to a short note school principal Juan Dominguez Torres sent out to families of Eagles players on Monday.
Albuquerque Public Schools spokesman Martin Salazar confirmed Hirschman is on administrative leave.
As to why Hirschman is on leave, that is unknown. When reached Monday afternoon, Torres told the Journal, “I can’t comment on that outside of what I provided in the note.”
Eldorado Athletic Director Roy Sanchez also declined to comment, although he did say Hirschman’s leave “does not involve soccer.” But he declined to further elaborate.
Efforts to reach Hirschman for comment were not immediately successful Monday afternoon.
Torres said he did not know how long this investigation would take. The timing certainly is poor for the Eagles. They are 10-5-3 overall and 4-2-2 in District 2-5A. They have two remaining games in the regular season this week: Wednesday versus Sandia and Friday against Capital.
Assistant coach Doug Daily “will serve as the interim head coach until further notice,” Torres’ note said.
This is not Hirschman’s first paid leave issue at Eldorado.
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In October/November of 2012, when he coached the school’s girls soccer team, he eventually was forced to resign due to a pair of incidents late in that season.
Both incidents had religious undertones. One of them involved a player from an opposing team being hurt during a match. Eldorado held a prayer for her, which was a direct violation of Albuquerque Public Schools policy. The second was Hirschman showing two religion-themed movies to his team without getting prior administrative approval.
He said he would have been fired had he not resigned.
Years later, he was hired to coach the Eldorado boys.
