By Amyn Bhai
When Adam Eskridge took over as Culver City High School’s athletic director, it wasn’t a new chapter in his life, but a full-circle moment. He’s a product of the city of Culver City.
His mom taught at Farragut Elementary for more than 30 years. His dad helped run Culver Center Flowers, a family business that spanned three generations and nearly a century in the city. “Three generations, 90-plus years in Culver City,” Eskridge says. Culver City raised him.
Even his path to athletics started here. As a high school senior in 2000, he was a teaching assistant for longtime athletic director Jerry Chabola, who also happened to be a family friend.
“That’s kinda how I got my taste into this job and the amount of work that went into it,” Eskridge says.
After playing golf at Cerritos College for two years, Adam transferred to UC Riverside, where he found his calling. “The first practice I ever went to, I was like, oh yeah, this is it. This is where I want to be,” he said.
Eskridge became a student manager for the basketball team, then an undergraduate assistant, and that’s when coaching took hold.
It eventually brought him back home. Chabola was the one who told Adam when Culver High had lower-level coaching openings for basketball, and Adam took the opportunity—starting with the freshman basketball team, then the junior varsity, and eventually becoming varsity head coach. He spent 12 years coaching basketball and five of those as the varsity head coach.
Even when he had to step away from coaching varsity basketball at Culver, after taking a teaching job at San Rafael Elementary in Pasadena he stayed connected by coaching lacrosse, thanks to the sport’s flexibility. It felt like every time Adam left, Culver City High School had a way of pulling him back.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” he said. “San Rafael Elementary had an amazing principal who started training me for this type of job.”
The principal, Rudy Ramirez, pushed Adam to look beyond the immediate. “He was like, ‘You need to be an admin. You need to be a principal, whatever it is.” It was that same principal who encouraged him to apply for the athletic director’s job when it became available after one of Culver City’s most successful athletic directors, Tom Salter, retired after the 2023 school year.
Principal Ramirez didn’t just nudge him—he actively made a case for Adam’s hire as the athletic director at Culver High. Now, Adam has what his son would call a dream job.
“He (his son) loves sports. If he could watch some type of game every day, pro, college, high school—he’d be happy,” Adam said. “And now he gets to hang out with me and watch sports.”
Still, the job isn’t easy. “There are times when it’s kinda overwhelming,” he admits. “I feel like I never go home. I work some 60-to-70-hour weeks. But the best part of my day is when the afternoons come around and I get to watch. For me, that’s the exciting part.”
That level of commitment creates a deep connection to his teams, whether he’s pacing nervously during a CIF softball final or silently hoping a coach makes the right substitution—it’s all rooted in mutual respect. Sometimes, he catches himself thinking like a coach again: “And then I’m like, ‘no, no, no.’ [But the coach] knows better. He’s at practice every day—I’m not. So, I step back. I have so much respect for all our coaches. That’s part of where my nerves come from, for them. Because I want them to succeed. I just want the best for them and their players, too.”
Eskridge’s coaching instincts inspire his approach as an athletic director. “I always love to say, any given day, right? You can knock them off. Maybe they beat us 99 out of 100 times, but there’s gonna be one—and today might be that one. You just gotta get out there and compete like it’s the one.”
As an AD, he applies that same mindset to the bigger picture. “You deal with the cards you’re dealt. Sometimes you’ve got the talent, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes your facilities have issues—whatever it is, you just gotta make the most of it.” Facilities, in fact, are a major focus. “Right now, we need to focus on the field and the track,” he said. “They both need some attention. They both need to be redone.”
Looking further ahead, there are also hopes of building an on-campus pool. “It’s really just financial at this point,” he says. “We believe we have the space on campus—ideally, for us, it would be on that grass field between the tennis courts and the brick building where the football locker room is. But it’s a million-plus [financial] project.”
Thanks to a newly energized and motivated booster club, fundraising is now on firmer footing. The new leadership inherited a difficult situation. The nonprofit status had been lost, taxes hadn’t been filed, and much of the existing funds had to go toward legal fees to clean up the mess. “Leadership wasn’t taking care of the things they needed to take care of,” he said. “But the new group came in, cleaned it all up, and now they’re ready to go.”
That forward momentum is showing up both on the scoreboard and in the classroom. “They do the CIF academic awards,” he says. “Every single one of our teams last year and this year, qualified for honorable mention, which means every varsity team had over a 3.0 GPA. And the girls’ lacrosse team had the highest team GPA.” Additionally, about 15 athletes are set to play in college next year, including one at an Ivy League school and another one that will be attending West Point Military Academy
It all adds up to something bigger than wins and losses. “The ass-kickings don’t hurt as bad when you know you’re going to make a long-term impact.”
Eskridge isn’t just running an athletic program. He’s nurturing a culture, one built on legacy, grounded in family, and driven by a big heart for the Culver City community.