An Interview with Nancy Giddings and Charlie Groth

 

At local high schools, fall sports are in the books and winter athletic programs are in full swing. The small-school athletic director shoulders an often overlooked and underappreciated role in this process. Among other duties, the athletic director (A.D.) is responsible for coordinating all sporting events, making sure home contests run smoothly, and overseeing coaches and athletes throughout the year.

 

During fifteen years as a junior high and high school coach, I have had the privilege of working for a number of excellent athletic directors. I interviewed two successful local athletic directors to get their unique perspective on working at schools with less than two hundred students grade 7-12.

 

Charlie Groth has overseen the athletic department at 1B Curlew High School for the last decade. A teacher for thirty-two years, Charlie has coached fifty-one seasons of sports. He coached the 2007 State 1B softball champions and was the athletic director during the 2006 State B girls basketball championship and the 2007 State 1B girls volleyball championship in which the girls were runners-up.

 

Nancy Giddings was the athletic director at 2B Republic High School from Fall 2002 to July 2007, then again from March 2008 to Spring 2009. The sports programs saw consistent success in district and state playoffs, including a boys basketball state championship in 2004 and back-to-back state wrestling championships in 2008 and 2009. Burl Coffee took over for Nancy in June, 2009.

 

Dennis Thompson: What do you see as the three most important duties of a small-school athletic director?

 

Charlie Groth:

 

Be accurate and timely in your work. Errors on schedules, rosters, and state athletic association paperwork cannot happen. Being accurate and timely keeps things running smoothly and is necessary for good relations with coaches and the public.

 

Communicate. Talk as needed, listen as needed. Communicate with parents, coaches, local

papers, athletes and administration about important things happening within the sports program. Be available.

 

Be honest and fair. The truth hurts sometimes, especially when decisions by the athletic director affect someone negatively. Still, it’s important to enforce the school rules uniformly, not based on the talent of the athlete or the clout wielded by individual community members.

 

Nancy Giddings:

 

Safety. First, you must make sure the facility is safe. The insurance company has some pretty clear requirements for the field, court, track, etc. You must make sure equipment is safe, especially football helmets and pads. Helmets must be on a refurbish cycle and you must keep records so you know kids are wearing safe helmets. You want to make sure the coach has safety regulations for practice and play. It’s our job to keep our kids safe – a huge responsibility. You must make sure travel is safe, you have guidelines for supervision and releasing kids at events, you have given coaches the info they need, and you must be very careful when teams spend overnighters – being responsible for other people’s kids is a huge job.

 

Coordinating events. This involves arranging transportation, officials, helpers, and building schedules. Also you are responsible for the facility, security, supervision of students attending, and janitorial duties. In order to have a program, you must have contests and that takes planning and overseeing.

Maintaining high standards. A.D.s need to make sure that coaches are doing what they need to do to build character and teach life lessons.

 

Participating in sports is a privilege, not a right. Teams represent our school and community, so the impression they make is huge. A.D.s need to set standards for school work and behavior. Our athletes must know that they have to meet grade standards and be good citizens or they will not play for our team. The A.D. must do the work to make sure standards are set and maintained.

 

DT: When you accepted the job as A.D., did you realize the extent of the responsibilities?

 

NG: I probably did not realize everything involved, but I had a good idea of the job responsibilities because I had been a high school principal for many years. As principal, I had the responsibility of doing supervision at all junior and high school events. I was surprised at the amount of time it takes to do everything needed.

 

CG: Yes. I knew there would be easier elements to the job, but that for the most part I would be on-call twenty-four hours a day. I realized there would be a lot of work behind the scenes to manage all the little things. The general public sees the results of major administrative tasks the A.D. does like scheduling contests and overseeing meetings, but they don’t know everything that is required just to make one event run smoothly.

 

DT: What is your approach with the parent of a problem athlete?

 

NG: I tried to listen first, but ninety-nine percent of the time I referred the parent to the coach. I asked the parent if they had talked to the coach and if they hadn’t I told them to begin there. If a parent complained about playing time, I said, “That is a coaching decision and we hire coaches to make those decisions–a coach decides who to play based on performance at practice and attitude.”

 

CG: Initially, I expect the coach of the athlete to communicate with the parents. If I intervene, I approach differently based on the type of issue that presents (e.g. an anger management problem versus an attendance issue). Based on the problem, I have a one-on-one conference with the parent without the athlete present. Afterward I conference with parent and athlete together.

 

DT: Describe one of your greatest challenges as A.D. and what you learned.

 

NG: The greatest challenge was trying to make sure that the coaches got all the information they needed and that they followed the standards of student behavior expectations and academic performance. I learned that communication was a real challenge due to the amount of time everyone has.

 

CG: Coping with finances. Working in a sparsely populated, low-income county (we have the highest unemployment rate in the state), I have a difficult time asking local businesses for donations. I don’t expect my coaches to either. Our community approves levies with the understanding that programs use the money wisely. However, levy dollars only cover transportation costs and coaching stipends at our school. Supplies, uniforms, overnight lodging and meals at state events, and wages for officials come out of the associated student body fund. Our gate income for sports doesn’t even come close to covering these expenses. Even though we funnel income generated by ASB card sales and basketball concessions to the general athletic fund, we still end up short every year. I see the athletic fund bleeding and find it extremely difficult to come up with viable solutions that don’t effect the programs we offer currently.

 

DT: What single quality do you most admire in a coach?

 

NG: I admire a coach’s ability to set high expectations in academics, behavior, appearance, practice effort, and sportsmanship. I admire the coach’s ability to get kids to buy in to the program. That usually means having the fortitude to deal with the consequences of NOT living up to the standards to show all players that there is no tolerance for inappropriate behavior.

 

CG: Dedication. I define this as the ability to spend countless hours helping the players on the team become the best that they can be. This is extremely difficult when a team isn’t winning. A true leader of the team keeps things positive and fun in a not-so-positive environment, and must persevere through player disillusion and the complaints of parents. Coaches now have to be dedicated year-round in order to stay competitive with other schools. They have to do more film study than ever before and give up more family time to help their program. I admire all coaches who do this.

 

Thank you, Charlie and Nancy, for all the hard work and long hours that you have dedicated to the student-athletes of Ferry County.

 

Dennis Thompson is the junior high football coach at Republic. His first novel–4th and Forever–is currently under negotiations with CMP Publishing.