Ryan Paradise reached out to Yorkville Christian about one job opportunity and landed another.

He believes it to be an ideal fit.

The Northern Illinois graduate who played basketball there and was Marmion basketball coach before running his Basketball Paradise program in the Fox Valley area has been hired as Yorkville Christian’s athletic director.

Paradise, who lives in Yorkville with his wife and two kids, a 10-year-old son and six-year-old daughter, replaces Aaron Sovern, Yorkville Christian’s AD since 2013.

Sovern also was the school’s boys basketball coach, but Paradise is hiring another person for that position.

“That is what a lot of people had asked me, are you coaching the team?” Paradise said. “When I reached out, I didn’t know about the AD position. I knew [Sovern] had done such a good job building the program.

“I reached out about the basketball program and they said are you interested in AD or basketball and I was like ‘Huh, ok.’ That is more the challenge that I am looking for.”

Paradise, who coached at Marmion from 2010-2014, had been running his Basketball Paradise program full time since 2015. As his own kids have grown older, Paradise has looked for new challenges. With the business under new ownership, he was still around, but not as involved.

“It has freed me up, been praying on what the next chapter of my life is, how can I make another impact in young people’s lives,” Paradise said. “I’m big on challenges. It seemed a perfect fit with coach Sovern resigning, having to build multiple programs upon the success they’ve had.”

Paradise’s background has been working with kids since he was a kid.

He was already a skills trainer in fourth grade, a shooting coach in middle school all the way through high school at Naperville Central.

When he got done playing in college he picked up doing that again.

“My main goal there was to teach the kids stuff I knew when I was 10 or 12,” Paradise said. “Time came I was looking for a new thing, my wife and I were excited for it, went for it.”

After his time at NIU, Paradise paid his way to go back to school at North Central to get his teaching degree, while he was the freshman coach at Marmion. The very next year he became varsity coach, and eventually transitioned to also teaching there, and did that for five years.

“One of my favorite things about building my own business was building the program,” he said. “I knew the basketball part. It came naturally building the program, setting the culture with relationships. It comes from the top down. The culture that gets set bleeds into other programs.”

Paradise admitted that it’s not the easiest transition this time of year, but things are going well, all things considered. He’s reviewed schedules with every sport, met with coaches, figured out what their needs were.

“I have some ideas of things I would like to implement,” he said. “This athletic program is something all Yorkville Christian families can be proud of. I’m not going to do a 180-degree turn. We want to continue the success and add new energy.”