With over 360 spring events, 631 athletes and 84 coaches to coordinate, the HHS athletics office has an equally important and difficult job. There are countless sacrifices and saves that go unrecognized throughout the year that this team tackles.
HHS boasts 19 sports teams, all of which have multiple events per week. In order to manage these events, three coordinators, Rick Bagley (head athletic director), Debbie Chancellor (Athletics coordinator) and John Lunceford (assistant athletic director) work together to curate each team’s schedule.
“We kind of take it week by week, because there’s so much going on,” Lunceford said. “We’ll get together, figure out where we’re needed, where we need help and who can cover what roles. It really kind of depends.”
The springtime in particular can be the hardest season to navigate as obstacles like the weather, prove to be volatile. If played on regular grass fields, baseball and softball games are typically rescheduled when it rains.
Along with the weather, winter sports, like basketball and wrestling, typically bleed into the spring seasons, adding to the general chaos.
“We have great facilities, and so it helps on our end,” Lunceford said. “For baseball or softball, having turf helps. If a game may be scheduled, we may shift it [to] here, as opposed to playing it somewhere else. Luckily, this has not been too hard of a spring.”
One of the biggest challenges is searching for qualified help to manage games. Sports like tennis may not require any extra supervision, but for soccer it is crucial to have a team on duty. For instance, someone needs to work the jumbotron, take tickets at the gate and have trainers on standby.
“We have a spreadsheet that I created that has everybody’s schedule on it, and then we have columns for the trainers, columns for John.” Chancellor said. “John does a lot of our technology and broadcasts and social media…I do more gate workers and make sure that we have assignments done and make sure that everything’s in Dragonfly.”
Communication between directors, coaches, athletes and parents is a critical factor in managing the season as cancellations do arise from time to time.
“I think communication with us and the admin team and the trainers [is strong], and our coaches, do a really good job making sure everybody’s in the notes,” Chancellor said. “the reschedules, you know, by talking to the trainers, ‘are we going to have somebody available?’, talking to Freddie Lawrence about buses and making sure we have transportation, so you have to have all that in place before you can even do it.”
Along with the plethora of other factors contributing to the general chaos of the director’s job, athletics can often interfere with academics.
“Our coaches are pretty good about letting teachers know, because teachers are willing and incredibly helpful to playing around a lot of absences that the majority we don’t have control over. Every golfer is Monday and Tuesday all day.” Bagley says “So if you play golf for Homewood High School in the second semester, you’re not gonna be in school. You’re gonna miss it out of school. And that’s not the kids fault. That’s not the teacher’s fault. But the teachers have been great, working with us and working with the kids as far as makeup work and giving them time.”
Signing day for spring athletes is May 5.
