Have job, will travel

Davis Whitfield knows his strengths and weaknesses and plans to start working on both soon after he becomes the executive director of the N.C. High School Athletic Association in February.

Whitfield has a broad range of experiences as a college athletics administrator but has had limited contact with high school athletic officials since he graduated from Rosewood High near Goldsboro in 1988.

"I know I will have to rely on the current NCHSAA staff," Whitfield said recently in Greensboro, where he is the director of championships for the Atlantic Coast Conference. "They are very good at their jobs and have great experience. I am going to rely on the staff and on our board of directors a great deal.

"But I can do that because I am going into a good situation. The high school association isn't broken. It doesn't need to be fixed. My job will be to continue what we are doing well and to continue to move the association toward."

The NCHSAA has worked for years to differentiate itself from other levels of competition and to emphasize that the goal of high school athletics is to help the participants become better citizens.

Although Whitfield's background and education is in college athletic administration, he said he wholeheartedly agrees with the high school sports philosophy and doesn't see high school athletics as a scaled-down model of college programs.

Whitfield, 39, plans to work quickly to learn more about the culture, climate and traditions of high school athletics in his home state.

His goal is to visit each of the NCHSAA's 386 member schools within the first year, ideally within the first six months. Whitfield wants to meet on an individual basis with as many superintendents, principals, athletic directors and coaches as he can in his first few months.

"I know I will be doing a lot of traveling, but I look forward to the opportunity to put faces with names and meet people," he said.

Whitfield wants to begin keeping hours at the NCHSAA offices in Chapel Hill in mid-January so that he can work with predecessor Charlie Adams.

Whitfield's current job with the ACC keeps him busy, but Whitfield said on nights and weekends he thinks about his new job and it excites him.

Sportsmanship, character, integrity and keeping athletics in the proper perspective has been the goal of the NCHSAA, and Whitfield doesn't expect any change in that emphasis.

"You have to have good sportsmanship," Whitfield said. "That is a given. Anything less will not be tolerated. There is no place, no place at all, for unsportsmanlike acts."

Whitfield smiles easily and people like ACC commissioner John Swofford and Wake Forest athletic director Ron Wellman praise him as a genuinely nice person.

But there is toughness, too.

"I've had to say 'No' a lot," he said. "I deal with scheduling and suspensions with the ACC, so you can imagine I have made many people unhappy. I want everything I do to be a win-win situation for both sides, but sometimes there can't be a win-win and you have to do what is right."

Adams said Whitfield brings new assets to the association.

"Change is inevitable, and change is good. This change in leadership will be particularly good," said Adams, who was the NCHSAA's top man for 25 years. "The association won't remain the same. It will get better under Davis."

Adams said Whitfield brings a wealth of experience in technology and athletic administration but that the new executive director also cherishes the same core values the NCHSAA has developed.

Nevertheless, Whitfield knows there will be an adjustment period.

"Charlie has been here so long that he is synonymous with the association," Whitfield said. "He is nationally respected and has done a tremendous job. My job will be to build on what he has done."

Whitfield said his high school athletic experience played a big part in the person he became.

His parents taught him to do things right, but athletics helped reinforced those traits.

His dream was to be a Division I baseball player. He achieved that, playing at East Carolina and North Carolina for two years each, but he was never an everyday player.

"I could have played more at a different level, but my dream was to play on the Division I level," he said. "Other high school athletes have other dreams. We need a program that meets all of their needs."

He lists people such as former ECU baseball coach Gary Overton; Greg Grantham of Jacksonville White Oak, who coached Whitfield in junior high; Rosewood's Branch Pope; the ACC's Swofford; and Wake Forest's Wellman as people who have made big impacts on his life.

"I know the impact coaches can have on young people," he said.

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