
{"id":2574,"date":"2008-05-15T06:24:22","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T14:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/05\/15\/carrboro-high%e2%80%99s-athletic-director-builds-new-foundation\/"},"modified":"2008-05-15T06:24:22","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T14:24:22","slug":"carrboro-high%e2%80%99s-athletic-director-builds-new-foundation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/05\/15\/carrboro-high%e2%80%99s-athletic-director-builds-new-foundation\/","title":{"rendered":"Carrboro High\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s athletic director builds new foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Sean Umstead<\/strong><br \/>\nCourtesy of the Carrboro Commons<\/em><\/p>\n<p>When the Charlotte Bobcats began their inaugural season in 2004, they won a modest 22 percent of their games. Setting up one team clearly has challenges; setting up 20 new teams could be overwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>That is what April Ross, Carrboro High School\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s athletic director, has on her plate after taking over for Steve Reinhart, who resigned in December.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nRoss, originally from Bath, was an athletic administrator at Briggs High School in Columbus, Ohio before returning to North Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I had been looking to come back home, and to open a brand new building to start something great from the beginning, which was one of my career goals,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said.<\/p>\n<p>Ross said her responsibilities include managing coaches, monitoring athletes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 academic eligibility, ordering transportation, scheduling and everything else that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s required to make a program run smoothly.<\/p>\n<p>Ross said the new student-athletes are putting forth an extraordinary effort to get teams off to a good start.<br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The student-athletes try extremely hard,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They give it 100 percent.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Ross said she understands the difficulty of a new school trying to compete with established and perennially successful teams.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have that experience factor,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Ross said chemistry within each team is key to building strong foundations and that such foundations can be established by athletes working with their teammates throughout the summer.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That is where the work is actually done,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really where you build skills and chemistry.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Although winning is the dream of every team within the athletic program, Ross said there are more important goals in high school sports. She said the school must first establish its identity in order for the athletic program to be highly successful. This, she said, can be done in the classroom, where every student, athlete or not, is able to come together.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My goal is that our athletes achieve in the classroom and have a great experience playing, because high school is where competitive [sports] end for most people,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said.<\/p>\n<p>Ross said she also hopes to see major facility improvements, including grandstands, bathrooms, concession sales, a press box and lights for the tennis courts and baseball field.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If we are going to put a great product on the football field, we have to have the facilities to support them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said.<\/p>\n<p>Ross is looking forward to the future and sees a lot of potential for improvement. According to Ross, such success can be achieved through hard work in three specific areas.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Academics, sportsmanship and teamwork,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ross said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Those are the three things I stress, because those are the foundations of interscholastic sports.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nSean Umstead is a UNC-CH student writing for the Carrboro Commons, a bi-weekly online lab newspaper for Jock Lauterer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Community Journalism class at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sean Umstead Courtesy of the Carrboro Commons When the Charlotte Bobcats began their inaugural season in 2004, they won a modest 22 percent of their games. Setting up one team clearly has challenges; setting up 20 new teams could be overwhelming. That is what April Ross, Carrboro High School\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s athletic director, has on her&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[241,151],"class_list":["post-2574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-schools","tag-athletics","tag-carrboro-high-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}