As high school athletics have evolved over the last 20 years, the duties and responsibilities of athletic directors have increased, which ask for more time and energy of many who also double as teachers and coaches.
As such, ADs have increasingly asked for more free periods from teaching to handle the increased administrative and support duties the position now requires. Many schools in San Mateo County have seen an increase of student participation in after-school athletics, especially in the post-COVID era and with it comes more work for athletic directors.
Athletic directors in the San Mateo Union High School District have been advocating for years to make the position full time and were willing to settle for one more free period — increasing it from two release periods to three.
The district’s Board of Trustees is deciding to go even further. Superintendent Randall Booker, who replaced the retired Kevin Skelly in July, said during a Nov. 17 school board meeting that he wanted to make athletic directors in the district a full-time position.
“We have an athletic program, across the district, where we have thousands upon thousands of students [who] participate,” Booker said during the meeting. “Hundreds of coaches and volunteers. This is a massive, massive program. … To think we can have an athletic director to do it [part-time] is not plausible or realistic.”
After Booker proposed his idea, Trustee Linda Lees Dwyer said her thinking about high school athletics and the roles ADs play have changed. During the board meeting Nov. 17, Lees Dwyer said she was on the Burlingame campus and saw it bustling with student-athletes from various sports practicing and playing. She said it struck her that ADs needed the time to help create a fully-formed high school student.
“There was a time where I thought (athletic directors) are teachers first,” Lees Dwyer during the meeting. “(I saw) so many students on that campus, all engaged. … So really, the work of the athletic director is education. It’s not managing all the athletics as much as it is hands-on education and encouragement of students to participate and to make sure everything is good.”
The wording of the job description is still being worked out and is being reviewed, but district spokesperson Laura Chalkley said it is expected to be approved at the Dec. 15 meeting.
“The recommendation is that it is to be approved,” Chalkley said.
All of which came out of the blue, as far as district athletic directors were concerned. While they have been pushing this agenda for years, there had been no recent discussions, especially with the changes happening to the school board this year.
“We’ve been advocating for an extra release period,” said Burlingame AD John Philipopoulos. “We’ve had two.”
Steve Sell, who took over as Aragon athletic director in 1996, said he has been banging the drum for so long that he got tired of it.
“We’ve been asking about this for a long time,” Sell said. “What the [Central Coast Section] requires, what the [CIF] requires, in terms of transfer paperwork and administrative details … you could show up at 7 a.m. And work until 6 p.m. and still leave with stuff to do.”
Athletics has changed from something to do after school to becoming an integral component of the high school educational experience. There is a lot more parent involvement and the focus on using athletics as a springboard to college scholarships and education has certainly ramped up over the years, so there is a lot more to ask of athletic administrators.
“Sports has always been a huge piece of the high school experience,” said Serra AD Justin Ferdinand. “But I think now, more so than 15-20 years ago, there is more of a bridge between high school and college athletics.”
Ferdinand has experienced life on both ends of the spectrum. He is in fifth year as Serra’s AD, a full-time position since he came aboard. Before that, he served six years as Half Moon Bay’s AD — while also serving as the school’s water polo coach and teaching five classes, never mind his life outside of his work.
“The life-family work balance, where there wasn’t one before, now it’s present,” Ferdinand said. “It’s such a welcome change.
“It’s like night and day, to be honest with you. You’re able to completely devote all of your time to the needs of the athletic department. [Being a full-time AD] just opens up the ability and the opportunity to spend more time with coaches and to get more face time with the student-athletes. You get to work to develop different programs that you couldn’t when you were part-time because there just weren’t enough hours.”
Both Ferdinand and Sell said the AD position goes well beyond pushing papers and checking grades. There is a human component to the athletic director’s duties and being full-time enables them to address those issues as well. Both said talking, listening and working to help develop their coaching staffs helps cut down on coaching turnover, which is key to a successful athletic program, they said.
But it also helps them to connect better with the student-athletes themselves and both Sell and Ferdinand said that came into sharp focus during and in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“I think during the pandemic, I think people really recognized the role athletics played,” Sell said. “It’s not just something they do after school. It’s something that connects kids to the school. With a lot of focus on mental health, I think people who pay attention to education are seeing connected kids are better in school and happier.”
The SMUHSD is currently the only district in the county making ADs full-time administrators. Despite working for a private school, Ferdinand hopes that the move by the San Mateo district is a sign of things to come for others.
“I would hope it moves in that direction because that means people and school administrators and districts are seeing the importance of that role,” Ferdinand said. “I think the San Mateo district going full-time ADs says, ‘Hey look, this isn’t a position that we can piece together with three or four other roles.’
“As the demand and the expectations of the high school experience continue to evolve, you can’t have one person do it to the level it needs to be done without it being done full time.”
While the final vote has yet to be held, Philipopoulos has already moved forward with changes. He said each school in the district — Aragon, Burlingame, Capuchino, Hillsdale, San Mateo and Mills — is in various stages of making the necessary accommodations, the biggest being finding teachers available to take over the classes the ADs will be giving up. Philipopoulos said he has already found replacement teachers for his classes, which is allowing him to already transition to a full-time AD role.
“I was just lucky here (at Burlingame),” Philipopoulos said.
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