What’s perhaps easiest for Sue Parent and Jim Murphy to describe as they reflect on a combined 49 years as high school athletic administrators is what hasn’t changed.
“You have to first of all always remember that it’s about the kids and that in your decision making to always do what’s best for the kids,” said Murphy, who recently retired from a 41-year career at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill that included 31 years in charge of the Eagles’ athletic program.
For Parent, who just retired after 18 years in a similar capacity at Van Buren High School, the overriding sentiment is similar.
“To me the ultimate thing was to be involved with teenagers, to be part of their lives and to help them however I could,” she said.
But the responsibilities involved in providing that help changed considerably for both Parent and Murphy during their tenures — right down to the job title that evolved from athletic director to athletic administrator, perhaps reflecting the growing number of relationships to be nurtured with student-athletes, coaches, parents, school officials and others in order to sustain a successful program.
It’s a time-consuming process that extends well beyond the increasing amount of desk work required of the position — a volume of documentation made somewhat easier over the years thanks to the advent of computers and email.
Athletic administrators routinely work the school’s regular day shift and then are responsible to oversee home-game venues as often as six afternoons or evenings a week during the three sports seasons.
“My job changed immensely,” said Murphy, who served simultaneously as GSA’s boys varsity basketball coach during his first four years as athletic administrator. “I had 12 teams when I started, and now I’ve got 12 programs. We’ve just kept growing and growing and growing.
“After a while it got to be a little overwhelming, and that’s why I just had to focus on being AD and give up coaching.”
But while an increased diversity of offerings — GSA added indoor and outdoor track, golf, swimming, sailing, tennis and various subvarsity teams during Murphy’s tenure — has stretched out the athletic administrator’s workload at most Maine high schools, that hasn’t been the case at some northern locales, where statewide enrollment declines have been most drastic.
“The difficult part for me is that when I started our enrollment was around 154 and we’ve gone down to where now we might have 80 in the high school,” said Parent.
As a result, Van Buren has dropped baseball and softball in recent years, leaving the Crusaders with only tennis as a spring sport.
“It’s hard to say you’re going to have to do away with something. I think every athletic administrator has a hard time when that happens,” Parent said. “But I know this year I did scheduling for basketball before I left and most everyone up here doesn’t have a JV program anymore, and that really hurts the programs, too.”
While student enrollment for most Maine schools has decreased substantially during the past three decades, many of the youths who remain have become more selective athletically — some out of preference, others out of necessity.
“We just don’t have the number of kids, and the other thing is that kids try to do a lot of different things today and we as educators want them to do all those different things,” said Parent. “We want them to do music, we want them to do art, we want them to do everything and we want them to be good citizens and get good grades above all else.
“I know in Van Buren I have a lot of kids who work, too. They’d like to have a car, or they’re working to pay to go to college, and you have to make allowances sometimes for that.”
Those increased opportunities off the field, along with activities fostered by the availability of such technology as cellphones and video games, have changed the daily routines for many teens to the point at which a sports practice after school throughout the year isn’t nearly as much the norm as it was a generation ago.
“At George Stevens we give out an award every year to seniors who participated in three sports all four years and this year we had just six seniors who received that award.
“Back when I started we had a lot of kids who played three sports,” said Murphy. “That’s just not the way it is right now.”
Another challenge for athletic administrators has been to find capable staff, with coaches coming more routinely from outside the faculty ranks every year.
“It’s become increasingly hard to find coaches, and I think that’s the case for everyone who’s an athletic director,” said Parent.
And no matter whether coaches come from within the faculty or from the community at large, they and their athletic administrators have faced more overt parental influence than their predecessors.
Such influence typically begins with investments in their children’s off-season sporting pursuits and gravitates to the interscholastic level.
“You’ve got more and more parents who advocate for their kids,” said Murphy. “When they say it’s not about playing time, it always is about playing time. We try to just let the parents know that we won’t talk to them about playing time. We figure that is what the coach does.”
Playing the intermediary has become a primary behind-the-scenes element of an athletic administrator’s job, often starting well before the first games are contested each year.
“I have a pamphlet I hand out during our preseason meetings on advocacy, on advocating for yourself, and I really encourage the student-athletes to advocate for themselves,” Murphy said. “I tell them you can go home and talk to your parents and use them as a sounding board, but if you want to find out what is happening or why you’re not getting the time you think you should be getting, then you should go to the person who has all those answers, and that’s the coach.
“You’re the one who should be talking to the coach, not the parents or anyone else.”
Murphy said that in his case, that approach largely has been successful.
“Not that I haven’t had parents who have been upset,” he said. “A lot of times they’ll go around you or above you and go to the principal and the principal will just say, ‘You have to talk to Mr. Murphy first if you have a problem.’ Then lot of times they’ll back off because they know that at our preseason meetings that I’ve told them exactly what they have to do and I really follow through with that.
“I’ve had one or two coaches that have had some parents come and talk with them, but these were coaches who worked outside the school and a lot of times they didn’t understand that the more you talk to the parents the more you have to talk to the parents.”
Both Murphy and Parent are moving away from the communities they’ve served as athletic administrators in retirement — Murphy to the Augusta area and Parent to Florida.
But with careers both challenging and satisfying now behind them, the memories are plentiful.
“I loved the kids,” said Parent, who had a scholarship named in her honor at Van Buren’s graduation last month. “I’m going to miss them.”
