GAINESVILLE — No matter the sport, or organization, it’s hard to follow a legend.
But Stan Lewis said he is up for the challenge.
Hall County’s newest system-wide Athletic Director, a former Chestatee Athletic Director and Johnson principal until being named to take over for long-time Hall County Communications Director and Athletic Director Gordon Higgins last month, officially assumed his new responsibilities on July 1.
And like a 100-meter dash, Lewis is jumping out of the gates full-speed ahead. But he also knows, over the long haul, it’s more like the 3,200-meter run where patience, pacing, and planning will be the keys to success.
“It’s a big job. Just from an athletic standpoint we have seven schools that all have needs and wants, whether it’s from facilities or equipment or whatever. There’s just so many things that go into having an athletics department and being successful across the board,” Lewis said. “Gordon did a great job in his time in Hall County and helped create an environment where the programs could grow and be successful. I have some big shoes to fill in keeping this moving forward.”
And with that comes some not-so-unique challenges that face almost every athletic department across the country in today’s sports world, whether it’s from a county-wide or individual school perspective.
Lewis oversaw a Chestatee athletics department (2002-2007) during perhaps its most successful overall period to date. As a principal at Johnson he witnessed dramatic demographics’ shifts that have been the norm over the past 15 years at the Oakwood campus. He is now bringing his experiences and understandings to the Hall County system as a whole in a sports era that is becoming defined by some troubling issues (to list just a few):
- Numbers in several sports have been on a steady decline;
- The expectations of athletes and parents, not to mention their direct input into programs -- good and bad -- has changed over the past 20 years;
- Constant athlete transfers;
- Outside influences like AAU and the myriad of travel leagues in all sports that have caused many high school systems to have to rethink how they operate.
“It’s hard to pinpoint any one particular thing and say ‘that’s it,’” Lewis said during an hour-long phone interview this week. “I think a big thing about kids today is that many who could be good at sports don’t participate because they’re afraid of losing. We need to figure out how to change that attitude.
“Along with that is that the culture right now nation-wide is to win at all costs, especially with some of the things like AAU and travel leagues. I was a high school and college wrestler. I wanted to win. I worked hard to be the best I could be. But some of my more vivid and satisfying moments came when I lost.
“Knowing that you competed hard against a better opponent and left it all out there and then realized that the world wasn’t going to end because you happen to lose that one match, or game, or whatever. That is what we need to be getting kids today to understand. Our kids need to learn how to handle adversity and I know sports can teach that.”
Lewis stated that he knows changing that attitude among so many individuals, cannot, and will not, be done overnight. But he also said instituting a more direct purpose could get the ball rolling.
“I think the biggest challenge initially for me is developing a common sense of purpose for our athletic programs from the top down,” Lewis said. “With this many schools in a district it can be hard to be focused as a unified group. We have to do a better job of stating what our purpose is, what do we what from an athletic standpoint.
“What is our why? What are our core beliefs? Establishing why we exist as an entity and not forgetting about our purpose and core beliefs. Those are things I will be working on initially as we sit down as a collective group of ADs and coaches.”
But Lewis also said he doesn’t want those running the programs to forget why most kids get involved in sports in the first place. Lewis was a three-time state champion in wrestling at Lumpkin County (Class 1984) and wrestled collegiately for one season at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
“If you’re playing a sport, you want to win,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with that attitude at all. Winning matters, the scoreboard does in fact matter. But it's not the only thing that matters.
“I feel we are also obligated to help develop confident, capable, and resilient human beings -- people of character who have grit and humility -- by the time their (run) as athletes come to an end, which is high school for most athletes.”
Finding those athletes, however, has also become a challenge, and in some cases, a serious issue as high schools try to maintain stable and viable programs in every sport for both girls and boys. Girls softball participation across the board nationally is approaching crisis-level. Outside forces have taken shots at trying to curb football participation. Many of today’s generation of rising athletes, and their parents, also appear to want instant results, which has increased nearly 10-fold from just a decade ago of transferring from one school to another on an almost yearly basis in search of championships and increased input into the inner-workings of programs.
“I want to see increased participation across the board in all sports, all schools. That is one of my top priorities,” Lewis said. “One way I think to do that, again, is to have a very clear, stated purpose of what you want. Some kids today leave one (school) area because they don’t think they’ll play, or because they don’t think the team will be good. We have to find a way to change that.”
And while Lewis said his job as county AD is to oversee the system as a whole and make decisions based on what is in the best interest as a collective group, each school AD will still have the autonomy to run their programs with individual goals in mind.
“Superintendent (Will) Schofield has created an atmosphere where autonomy is encouraged and okay, as long as it is within our core beliefs and mission as a system,” Lewis said. “I’m not going to change that approach. It is important that we stay within those parameters because once we decide what our purpose and beliefs are, we can make good decisions off of those moving forward.”
Despite what look like some interesting and serious challenges ahead for Lewis and Hall County programs as a whole, he offered up a positive State-of-the-County message as well.
“Overall on the field, we’re healthy,” he said. “Soccer has been outstanding the last few years with teams like the Johnson boys, East Hall boys, the Flowery Branch girls. North Hall wrestling and baseball. Branch girls basketball. Some really good teams in almost every sport. Very strong in general, in my opinion.
“I am concerned about softball, which I’m sure a lot of ADs around the state and country are. Not sure why the numbers are so down but it’s something we’re going to look at. As we move forward, it is my intent for the Hall County ADs, as a group, to reach a consensus on some key things that do matter -- attributes that will serve our student athletes well into adulthood after their high school career is over.
“It’s going to take some time to fight some of the attitudes about sports right now that are out there. It’s not a sprint. Some of these things you have to play for the long game. That’s what I intend to do for as long as I am here.”
