Jim Pappas, Cedar Ridge athletic director (Photo Courtesy of Teri Saylor, VYPE High School Sports Magazine/VYPE.com)
Feb 14, 2010
For high school athletic directors, Murphy’s Law is a way of life.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
“I can go for three days with perfect weather and everything just perfect, and then we get four inches of snow,” said Walt Hensler, athletic director at Northern Durham High School.
Even the mere threat of four inches of snow wreaks havoc on a carefully conceived schedule, and this can be compounded many times over if multiple events are in the pipeline.
Hensler rolls with it, and he’s been rolling with it the last 11 years. Chances are, if Mother Nature’s not throwing a curve ball, it’s a million other things.
Hensler is among a small family of athletic administrators who are equal parts CEO, budget director, human resources specialist, counselor, public relations ambassador, event manager, equipment and facilities manager, landscaper, and more often than not, bus driver.
“Going out to the bus garage and getting a bus is the less-than-glamorous part of the job,” said Jim Pappas with a chuckle.
As head men’s basketball coach at Cedar Ridge High School in Hillsborough, Pappas is one of many athletic directors who also coaches.
“Most athletic directors get into their jobs through coaching,” said Bobby Guthrie, senior administrator for Athletics at Wake County Public Schools. The tough transition takes about a year.
“If they can survive that first year, most will hang on for the long haul,” Guthrie said.
Sharing 90 years of experience among them, Hensler, Pappas and Gary Powers, athletic director at Southeast Raleigh Magnet High School, are bonafide long haulers.
“We’re dinosaurs in this business,” Pappas said.
But if these lifers are athletic directasauruses, they are nowhere near extinction. They are constantly evolving and growing.
“Athletic directors may have played a sport (in high school), then they got into coaching, then, after an often tough transition, they can evolve into a successful, satisfying and productive career,” Guthrie said. “They enjoy what they do. Having an opportunity to help others is what keeps them going.”
Pappas has enjoyed enormous job satisfaction during the course of his career.
“I have enjoyed the last 30 years, and I still feel young,” Pappas said. “I still enjoy coming to work every day. As tough as the job can be, I know each night when I go to bed, the positives always outweigh the negatives.”
Powers agrees.
“The thing that keeps coaches and A.D.s in their job is the challenge and variety,” he said. “There is something new every day. And there’s always a reward at the end of the day. Always something you can feel good about.”
One of Powers’ best success stories just as easily could have amounted to a dismal failure for a young, skinny freshman who desperately wanted to play football.
“David Merritt was not successful as a ninth grader,” Powers said.
But the boy worked hard, became a starter, and earned a scholarship to N.C. State University. After a career with the Miami Dolphins and Arizona Cardinals, he went on to coach and now is the secondary coach for the New York Giants.
With all of his successes in football, there was one event in Merritt’s life he never forgot, and he doesn’t let Powers forget it either.
“David always comes back to visit whenever he’s in town and never misses a chance to rag on me for cutting him as a ninth grader,” Powers said.
Powers has been at Southeast since it first opened its doors in 1997. He’s served as the school’s athletic director for the past six years. A magnet school, Southeast is located on Poole Road in the southeastern part of Raleigh, just outside of the downtown area.
“We have no feeder schools; we don’t know who our incoming athletes likely will be, so we wait and see each year,” Powers said.
Southeast is known for its strong track and field program. Last fall, the school had one of the best football teams in the Triangle, going 9-2 in regular season action and producing two players who received scholarship offers to top universities; quarterback Gabe Henderson, offered a scholarship to Kent State and offensive lineman Kendall Moore, offered a scholarship to Notre Dame. Both have rescinded earlier decisions to accept those offers and are keeping their options open.
Success is not all about getting a coveted scholarship. Powers truly believes this.
“The majority of high school athletes are rank and file kids,” he said. “This year we had 100 football players, including 28 seniors, and only two of them got college scholarship offers. The numbers don’t lie. A majority of high school athletes play recreational sports. They won’t play again after high school. This is a harsh reality for some parents.”
Ah parents.
“I am not going to lie to you,” Pappas said. “There is a lot of parental pressure.”
Parents want more playing time for their children. They want their athletic kids to specialize in hopes of being noticed by a college recruiter.
“One of our biggest challenges is communication,” Hensler said. “It’s challenging dealing with the fact that everyone’s not going to play in college and in the pros, and communicating that fact to the athletes and their parents.”
The economy has also created a set of challenges for athletic directors and their programs.
Most county governments pay coaches’ supplemental salaries and allocate discretionary revenue to athletic programs in public schools.
“We pay for our own transportation costs, game officials, security, EMS, and other costs associated with running events,” Pappas said.
The N.C. High School Athletic Association’s calendars show 17 sports for boys and girls, but basketball and football are the big revenue-generators, bringing in the gate receipts that largely make sports happen.
Attendance is down across the board, forcing athletic directors to get creative in finding ways to keep kids in sports.
“We look at how we do things,” Pappas said. “We don’t want to get rid of any programs, but we do take a look at making adjustments. We look at traveling and scheduling games efficiently and economically. We have to juggle uniform rotation, which means sometimes one team will have to make their uniforms do for an additional year in order for another team to get new ones.”
At Saint Mary’s School, which is an all-girls high school, serving both boarding students and day students, the economy hasn’t significantly affected the sports program, according to Athletic Director and Head Basketball Coach Seth Lieberman, but it has felt a ripple effect from other financially challenged schools.
“Some schools can’t afford to send their JV teams to play, and that seems to be the biggest challenge we face; the fallout from the other schools that have taken hits,” Lieberman said.
Hensler has some advice.
“You must have a great relationship with your school’s bookkeeper,” he said. “That person must be your friend. Communication is a must.”
Powers strives to maintain a happy medium, and he has survived in a job that can be as heavy as a pressure cooker by maintaining his focus on the student athletes and the quality of the program.
Having empathy helps too.
“Imagine that’s your child out there playing,” he said.
He takes a broad view.
“A lot of these kids don’t come from the best homes. A lot don’t live in safe environments, but they can become productive citizens,” he said. “You want these kids to be well-rounded. Everyone likes to win, but the better stories often come out of kids overcoming hardships to get to a better place, and if you can help them get to a better place and make a difference in their lives, it’s worth it. I see it in the mornings when I see kids who come to school to get a good breakfast and a safe place to be.”
Powers also sees it in his former students who didn’t become professional athletes, but who did become successful in their careers.
“Success is not always defined in the players like professional athletes Leroy Harris in the NFL or Darrius Barnes, who is playing professional soccer, but it’s in the mechanic or the accountant or the teacher who has gone on and made something out of his life,” Powers said.
“Being an athletic director can be a thankless job, but it’s rewarding too,” Guthrie said. “A.D.s understand what interscholastic athletics can do for a student.”
Those rewards keep Lieberman in his job.
“The best part of my job is seeing the moment it clicks for the team. Knowing we have put in a lot of effort and the athletes have improved,” he said. “Also, seeing the athletes grow in their sports and as young women.”
Hansler, a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., who came to Durham by way of West Virginia, has been athletic director at Northern for 11 years. Northern is located north of Durham’s inner city. He marvels at the lengths kids will go to so they can play sports.
“The biggest issue for a lot of the urban kids is transportation to and from school,” Hensler said. “They have to take the city buses, which works fine for day time, but if they leave, they have a hard time getting back to the campus, and this affects their attendance at athletic events. Lately the city bus system has expanded its service out to the high school until 9 p.m. and that makes it a lot better.
“There is no question of their desire to participate. Kids will stay at school all day, practice for two hours, and then wait for their parents to come get them or take the city bus home. For some, it’s a huge sacrifice on their part,” he said.
The old clich goes, “you can’t win ‘em all.” Sometimes they don’t win at all.
Northern is coming off a tough football season. Last summer, Coach Anthony Sullivan, full of great anticipation for a good year, wasn’t prepared to finish his second year with 11 losses.
Hensler spent the season propping up his young coach.
“Our football team struggled this year under a relatively new coach who works hard and has high hopes,” Hensler said. “I met with him throughout the season to make sure he stayed mentally strong through a tough season. I wanted to give him someone to talk to.”
When the going gets tough, there’s always a new season to look forward to. Hensler looks for any positives that can come from losing, and these positives sound like a metaphor for what keeps athletic directors going, day in and day out, even when faced with a losing season.
“We found out the character of our team,” he said. “We found out our kids competed until the final whistle and didn’t quit on us. Plus, there’s always hope with the start of a new season.”
Athletic Directors wear many hats. Overall, their job is to establish a climate of sportsmanship, fair play and ethical conduct within the athletics department and to a large extent, within the entire high school. Here’s just a partial list of the additional elements in their job description:
Student-Athletes: Help student-athletes balance academics and athletics. Develop a system to monitor attendance, academic performance, personal conduct, eligibility, training, behavior issues, athletic codes. Develop student leadership initiatives.
Personnel: Hiring, motivating, informing, supervising, training and evaluating coaches.
Stakeholders and Public Relations: Cooperative work with parents, faculty, administration and the community. Implement strategies and provide materials for maintaining effective public relations.
Communication: Provide information about schedules for practice and competition, as well as administer the departmental budget. Publish and provide coaches and student-athlete handbooks.
Administration: Provide strategies for working with other departments; promote school spirit and broaden the visibility and impact of athletics. Be accountable for parent permission, medical exams, insurance, authorization to treat injuries, acknowledgement of contents of parent athlete code and coaches manual.
Legal Issues: Respond to immediate and unanticipated legal issues. Develop and implement Emergency Action and Crisis Management plans.
Human Resources/Conflict Management: Work with cheerleaders, team physicians, booster clubs, national organizations and support staff – announcers, ticket takers, crowd control personnel, security guards, equipment managers, contest officials, certified athletic trainers, secretarial and custodial staff.
General Responsibilities: Manage the athletic department according to established policies. Represent the school at local, state and national conferences.
Event management: Arrange event supervision, ticket sellers, announcers, game officials, security and the readiness of the playing surface. Develop and implement a community sportsmanship/citizenship program.
Budget Director: Accountable for the athletic department’s share of the school budget.
Advocate: Standard bearer, spokesman, defender and promoter for the department.
Visionary: Strategic or long-term planning, guide and compile thorough review of mission statements, goals, and status of all current programs and facilities; projection of the needs and directions for the future as well as necessary steps for successful achievement.
Scheduler: Coordinate facilities, officials, transportation, private sector events, recreation and intramurals.
Equipment and Facilities Maintenance: Issue cleaning and repair contracts to maintain player equipment in accordance with the National Operating committee on Safety of Athletic Equipment standards (NOCSAE).
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