After helping open Fishers High School and guiding its athletic program for two decades, Jim Brown is stepping away. Brown is retiring as athletic director at FHS, capping a 41-year career in Indiana high school athletic administration.

The Hamilton Southeastern Schools Board of Trustees confirmed Brown’s successor at its April 15 meeting, hiring Tyler Nicole, the former athletic director at Westfield High School, to fill the position.

Brown’s name has been tied to Fishers High School from day one. He came to Fishers for the school’s opening in the 2006-07 academic year and helped oversee facility renovations in 2009 and 2013, building the foundation for what has become one of the largest high school athletic programs in Indiana.

Before Fishers, Brown spent 21 years as athletic director at Triton Central in Shelby County, where he also served as assistant principal beginning in 1988-89.

His influence stretched well beyond the Tigers. Brown is in his 12th year on the IHSAA Board of Directors and has served as board president, vice president and executive committee vice chairman. He is in his 34th year as an assistant director of the IHSAA boys basketball state finals and has worked state finals events in track, volleyball and soccer. Fishers also served as a host school for the IHSAA soccer state finals from 2019 to 2021 and hosted the 2025 Indiana All-Star Futures Games doubleheader under his watch.

Earlier this school year, the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association named Brown its 2026 District 2 Administrator of the Year, recognizing his decades of support for high school basketball in Indiana.

He has also been a longtime leader within the Indiana Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association, serving as president in 1996-97 and as treasurer and conference chairman from 1998 to 2015. The National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association honored Brown with its State Award of Merit in 2001 and its Distinguished Service Award in 2012.

This spring, Fishers hosted the third annual Jim Brown Unified Track Invitational, an event named in his honor that has become a fixture of the FHS athletic calendar.

A 1973 graduate of Southwestern High School in Tippecanoe County, Brown earned a bachelor’s degree from Ball State, a master’s in education from Indiana State and an administrator’s license from Butler. He began his career as a physical education teacher at Rushville Junior High in 1978-79 before moving to Triton Central in 1981.

Brown and his wife Gretchen have two adult children, Liz and Nick, and eight grandchildren.

As Brown closes out his career, his fingerprints are on nearly every corner of FHS athletics — from the original buildout of the program to the facility upgrades, the state finals events hosted at Fishers and the generations of Tiger student-athletes who came through during his 20 years on the job.