Some people know exactly what they want to do when they graduate college. Carter Wilson was not one of those people.

After starting out as an accountant, Wilson switched gears and became a teacher and assistant boys' basketball coach at Decatur (Ga.) High School, his alma mater, in 1979. He was promoted to head coach in 1983, then moved to Georgia State University as assistant men's basketball coach two years later. He became head coach in 1994, but after three years returned to the high school ranks, taking over at Tucker (Ga.) High School, where he coached for three more seasons.

In 2000, Wilson was hired as Head Boys' Basketball Coach and Athletic Director at Decatur--a career move that stuck. He has taken the athletic department to new levels of success, highlighted by improving many of the school's facilities.

Wilson is also active on the statewide level, joining the Board of Directors of the Georgia Athletic Directors Association (GADA) in 2003 and serving as the organization's President in 2009-10. He earned GADA Region Athletic Director of the Year honors in 2004 and 2009 and received a Distinguished Service Award in 2010. In this interview, Wilson, CMAA, discusses his career path, hiring coaches, and dealing with negative publicity. Read more...   

The Ohio High School Athletic Association yesterday announced that its members had narrowly rejected a proposal that was aimed at leveling the playing field between public and private schools. The reverberations of the outcome went beyond Ohio's borders.

Once again, in another fashion, we are a battleground state.

High-school administrators, athletic directors and coaches throughout the United States have been following the OHSAA debate. Why? Private-school dominance of postseason tournaments is a national issue that is front and center with most every state athletic association, or will be soon. The growth of charter and open-enrollment schools is adding heat to the discussion. Ohio's proposed solution was viewed by many in the business as progressive beacon of hope - or, at least, as the best solution that has surfaced to date.

It was an attempt to alleviate competitive imbalance without resorting more radical means - namely, separating public and private competition, a measure that is becoming more prevalent.

The OHSAA wanted to go beyond enrollment in assessing school size. It wanted to use boundaries, tradition and socioeconomic considerations in determining sport-by-sport athletic counts. It proposed that a school could go up in classification depending upon how big a district it draws from, how many regional and state titles it has won over an eight-year period and how many free lunches it provides.

A similar proposal failed by a vote of 332-303 last year. That version was tweaked to lessen penalties for "tradition" - a nod to those principals and athletic directors who did not cotton to being penalized for success - but the measure was still defeated. Yesterday's vote was 339-301, or 53 percent to 47 percent.

What comes next could be ugly. Read more... 

April 2012 GHSA Newsletter