In the past 60 years there have been more Popes than leaders of the North Carolina High School Athletic Association.
"You're working with the youth of this great state, and you're working with athletics at the same time, so what can be better than that?" said Davis Whitfield, who recently became only the fourth NCHSAA Executive Director since it became a full-time position in 1948.
Whitfield took over in February from Charlie Adams, who had served since 1984. A Goldsboro native and 1988 graduate of Rosewood High, Whitfield has spent his entire life in North Carolina. He played baseball for East Carolina before transferring and earning his bachelor's and master's degrees at North Carolina. He then worked in the athletic departments at Campbell and Wake Forest before serving as an associate commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference for seven years.
Whitfield was sitting in his ACC office at Greensboro when he was recruited for the NCHSAA job. He was interested in traveling less and spending more time with his wife and two children, ages 5 and 2.
"I also looked at it from where can I make the most difference in the lives of young people in terms of athletics," Whitfield said. "And while I loved what I did at the other place, I didn't feel like I was truly making a difference to the young people and I feel like I can do that here. We're going to make that our focus — try to make sure that everything we do benefits the student-athletes."
Some critics suggest that the NCHSAA's strict enforcement of rules doesn't benefit the student-athletes who end up with suspensions, but Whitfield counters that the organization must take a hard line.
"You don't want to crack that door," Whitfield said. "We've been so consistent in how we've enforced our rules and regulations that we're successful in lawsuits 99 percent of the time."
Whitfield said that the most surprising part of his first eight months are the number of lawsuits and related expenses, which he said have both increased 300 percent in recent years.
"It's a trend of society that when a local school system says no, then they want to go to the next level, and if they still don't get the answer they want they're going to take it all the way to the top," Whitfield said. "Basically not taking no for an answer is one of the more common approaches, so we're dealing with that."
In the meantime, Whitfield said the NCHSAA is focused on helping its member schools financially during the economic downturn. The board of directors increased the reimbursement amounts for hotels, meals and mileage in every sport, and teams who qualify for the 64-team postseason tournaments can now opt out of the playoffs without penalty (fines were issued in years past).
The NCHSAA will also reduce the percentage of gate receipts it kept during sectional basketball games from 25 percent to 15 percent to help eliminate "deficit games," where host teams lost money in the playoffs, and it will more evenly divide the admissions from championship events like volleyball.
One important recent change was the board's decision to give multi-sport athletes more time to recover by widening the gap between the fall and winter season. Beginning this year the start of winter sports will be pushed back a week, and beginning in 2011 the football regular season will be decreased from 12 weeks to 11 weeks.
Whitfield also wants to improve how the NCHSAA utilizes technology. The association has set up a Facebook page and Twitter feed and has posted video pieces from the commissioner's office, but Whitfield wants the web site to be a one-stop shop for North Carolina high school athletics, with scores, video streams and information on policies and programs.
With a background in collegiate sports, one of Whitfield's first missions was to get out in the field. As of last week he had been to 92 different schools, and he was impressed by the number of people who put the well-being of the student-athletes first.
That has been one of the most enjoyable things about his first eight months, and he eventually hopes to follow the long reigns of Adams (1984-2010), Simon Terrell (1967-1984) and Hap Perry (1948-1966).
"I hope one day I'll be retired having served my 25 years as commissioner of the NCHSAA," Whitfield said.
Harold Gutmann covers the state of North Carolina for MaxPreps.com. He lives in Durham and can be reached at haroldgutmann@gmail.com.
