By Grant Miller

Lots of people attend sporting events. The spectators know the players. The players know the coaches. Few people know their athletic director. Like a farmer toiling in his field, we seldom meet him, but we see the fruits of his labor. 

Maury High School’s athletic director Tommy Staples took just over 10 minutes out of his relentless schedule to speak about life as an athletic director: his highs, his lows, his achievements, and his next steps for The Commodores. 

Staples is a Norfolk Public Schools alum who worked in education for 25 years. He played baseball for Old Dominion University, and he tried his hand at teaching English, coaching baseball, and coaching golf at Granby High School until 2007.  Then he got his first athletic director job with Norview High School until 2018.  He tried sales for what he called a “ mid-life crisis” before returning to athletics in 2020, replacing Ed Boyd as Maury’s AD. 

Staples took a brief moment from his busy day (his phone rang multiple times during the interview) to discuss life as an AD. The following has been edited for clarity: 

GM: So you were a coach for baseball and golf? Very transferable footwork I would imagine.

TS:  Yeah, I never played golf before. So I was one of those guys who just got thrown into it and learned it. Now I play. My son plays. So we play now.  

GM: I guess asking your favorite sport would be too obvious if you played baseball. So what would be, in your experience, the easiest sport to manage[as AD] versus the most difficult?

TS: I wouldn’t call any of them easy. I think they all have their own rewards, their own curses so to speak. Sports is an emotional thing.  Parents will be emotional, kids will be emotional, coaches are emotional. So with that there’s usually some kind of incident. You just [have to] calm everybody down. Everybody wants to compete. Everyone wants their kids to win. Kids compete. Parents might get upset if you lose a close game. Kids might get upset. 

But it’s a rewarding job as well. So every sport has its own ups and downs, and it’s my job to keep everything in the middle. I can’t get too high, can’t get too low because we can win a state championship in football, and then I get a phone call on the way home because a cheerleader wasn’t treated correctly or something. I can never be complacent. I always have to stay, you know, on the lookout but stay even-keeled.

GM: And would that be the biggest difference between coaching versus being the director, like how you get the calls for everything?

TS: Right and that goes back to the planning of stuff because [coaches], they send me their schedule and they can just coach, which is great. That’s what you want them to be able to do. And then I got to try and find the bus. I got to try and find the workers. I got to try and make sure the bus is on time, which dealing with today’s world, we don’t have any bus drivers. That’s hard to do. We got to work on game time. We had to move cross country to a later time because the city didn’t have bus drivers at that time. There’s always something that happens, and I just have to try and fix it I guess.

GM: Was finding bus drivers a new issue?

TS: No, it’s been something we’ve been dealing with, but here our in-house drivers have all retired or stopped driving. So the transportation can’t help us until 4:30 or 4 o’clock. So [during] that 2:30 to 4 [o’clock], range we need more in-house drivers. 

GM: Can you give me a particular moment as an athletic director that made you sit down and say, “Wow. This is why I do this. This is my why”? 

TS:  I don’t know if there’s a specific moment. It can be something as simple as walking out to the field and watching the kids compete. It could be something as great as going to college signing day where we’ll sign 20 athletes to different sports to play in college. It could be something as simple as seeing a kid graduate who used athletics as their way to get through high school. So there’s always hidden rewards, seeing the kids crying when they win a state title or seeing the kids happy because they won their first match in golf. When I was in sales for two years, I missed that. You see other people achieving, and that makes the job worth it. 

GM: We did a poll on the most popular sports in the school. You’re probably not surprised that football is the most popular sport for students and staff. The second most popular sport was track and field. Volleyball was up there. What makes those sports the most  popular, just the success or is it a cultural thing for the region? Obviously football’s highly successful. They win championships if not every year, every other year.  Is that because this is a football region or a volleyball region, or is it specifically because of Maury’s culture and success?

TS:  I don’t know specifically why those were the sports [that were the most popular]. You know, track and football are the ones that have the most participation. I know that has something to do with it. We give out student athlete cards to those who turn in their paperwork and are academically eligible, and they basically only wanted to go to football games. That allows them the social atmosphere of going to a football game and experienc[ing] that with [their] friends. So we could have 200 athletes go to a football game because going to a Friday night football game is what you do in high school. So I think that helps, along with the success and hard work they put in. 

Track, they’re just always in the paper as well. They’re always successful. The women’s program has been one of the best in the state for several years, so that definitely helps out.  Baseball went to the state semifinals last year. Girls tennis won the state finals a couple years ago. Basketball, state semifinals and finals. 

So we’re very successful in all the programs, but I would just say by the amount of kids and how they act helps them become more popular. You know, we could have 70 kids on the football team, and if they’re all acting up in school, they’re not going to be liked. But since they’re behaving mostly, then I think that they’re supported. I think that’s what we try and ingrain in all the sports, all the athletes here, is how to act and how to grow up.

GM: Now you mentioned basketball. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you. Are we close to having a new head coach before the season starts?

TS: We’ll definitely have a coach before the season starts. The season starts in November. But the position became available so late (Former head coach Brandon Plummer sent a resignation email on August 8, 11 days before the first day of school. -GM). Maury is a great school, so we didn’t have any positions in the building. 

So when you’re trying to hire a coach, the first thing they want to do is get in the building to be with their kids and monitor their kids. That’s been a hurdle we’re trying to overcome, and we just want to see if there are any positions available so that when we do the interview process, and we interview them, and they need to get in the building, we’ll know right away if we can or can’t hire.

GM: When you say get in the building, you mean also hire them as teachers or staff members?

TS: Yep. If  you’re not with your kids during the day, you don’t know what’s really happening. If Johnny messes up and a teacher sends an email, I might have another job out of the building. You can’t handle it. But if I’m in the building, I can handle it at that point, and you can monitor their grades better. You can monitor their behavior if you’re in the building. 

GM: If you had any advice for someone who wanted to be an athletic director, what advice would you give?

TS: That’s a good question because the main thing you need to do is have a balance. And I know I talk to a lot of coaches about that because it’s impossible to achieve as far as your home life and your job, but [get] as close to the balance as you can make it. With the hours that I work, we got volleyball Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, football Friday, and you know I have my own kids at home that are doing their events and doing their sports and participating. So I got to try and find the balance of when I can go see them and be with them and be supportive of my own family and then be here. So I think if you have a good spouse at home and the kids, and you do what you’re supposed to, it makes the job a lot easier. 

It’s like anything in life. Just have that balance between home and work, and try and be as personable as possible and answer emails and questions when they happen, so you don’t get bogged down and behind and stuff.  It’s basically an easy job.