By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

RESERVE — After guiding Riverside’s softball, girls basketball and volleyball teams to success at varying times in her seven-year run at the school, perhaps it was fair to wonder if there was one thing Hebert couldn’t do: slow down. 

She’s about to try. 

Hebert resigned from her post as Riverside assistant athletic director and head softball coach Monday, accepting an offer to return to John Curtis. 

Hebert will serve as assistant athletic director only at Curtis and will not coach. She cited a desire to scale back her duties and concentrate on family responsibilities as the catalyst for the move. 

“It was a decision I felt I had to make,” Hebert said. “It’s totally based on my three daughters and what’s best for our family. 

“Even though coaching has been my life over the past 20 years, I didn’t feel I could pass up the chance to step back from coaching and be an athletic director (only). It’s a chance to sit back and enjoy seeing (my daughters).”

Hebert’s daughters Toni and Dani were each juniors at Riverside, while youngest daughter Remi is a seventh-grader. 

Hebert said the decision was extremely difficult.

“I’d created a family here at Riverside,” she said. “From the administration, the teachers, the old-timers who supported us so much … It’s hard to leave. We’ve got an incredible team coming back in softball, and stepping away from that is extremely difficult as well.”

Hebert led Riverside to the Class 2A state softball semifinals last season, the fourth-consecutive season the Rebels have gotten at least that far. In 2012, Riverside finished as state runner-up to Curtis. Counting her first season with Riverside in 2008, where she served as assistant coach to Mickey Roussel, the Rebels tallied five semifinal appearances in her seven seasons with the team. 

She also guided Riverside to the second postseason victory in the history of the girls basketball program in 2013, and led Riverside to a quarterfinal appearance in volleyball in 2010. 

She’s no stranger to Curtis, the school where she made her coaching name before departing for Riverside in 2007. Hebert led Curtis to five consecutive state softball championships, nine softball district championships and nine basketball district championships. 

Riverside athletic director Timmy Byrd said Hebert will be “impossible to replace.”

“I know it had weighed on her over the past couple of years, whether or not she should be coaching,” Byrd said. “She had a great opportunity (with Curtis) and she couldn’t pass it up.”

Byrd called Hebert the school’s “backstop,” saying she was the only coach on staff who could fill as many roles as she did.

“She can coach anything, and not just on the girls side,” Byrd said. “She can coach the boys, too … in the five years I’ve been here, we’ve had multiple schools call to ask about hiring her. She was coveted everywhere because everyone knows how good she is. We appreciate everything she’s done for us here.”