The paperwork, thick as stacks of pancakes, surrounds him. There are team rosters to check for academic eligibility, injury reports to review, bus invoices to audit. There are coaches to evaluate, job applications to examine, schedules to make, fields and gyms to reserve, budgets to prepare. There are complaints to field from coaches, parents, administrators. And more. Much more.
The workload would tax any high school athletic director. But for Ken Still, the lone AD for 18 Boston public high schools that field teams, it’s a Sisyphean challenge. No matter how hard he pushes, the boulder rolls back. He also administers athletics at 22 middle schools.
“I’m fighting on all levels, and I’m trying to do too much,’’ Still said.
As a consequence, eligibility rules are violated with impunity - “We have illegal players playing all the time,’’ Still said - because his office is unable to check all the academic reports, birth certificates, residency documents, and medical forms of the thousands of students who participate in sports in the Boston schools. (He said his office thoroughly checks every team that qualifies for postseason tournaments.)
Other problems, from substandard coaches to inadequate facilities, may also go unsolved, Still acknowledged.
Still’s crew consists of an assistant, Wallace Johnson; an equipment manager, William Fitzgerald; a stadium manager, Ken Smith; and a crackerjack secretary, Mary Ellen Sheerin, working in a warren of offices at White Stadium in Franklin Park.
Still has ideas about how to improve Boston’s athletic system by developing better feeder programs and exposing more children to sports at younger ages, but he has little chance to pursue them.
Financial constraints have taken a toll, as the athletic department’s $3.7 million budget has remained steady since Still started the job in 2003.
Boston Schools Superintendent Carol R. Johnson praised Still’s “phenomenal’’ job performance. Despite a budget crisis likely to force district-wide cuts, Johnson said she plans to expand Still’s staff by hiring an administrator to improve athletics in the middle schools, whose only interscholastic sports currently are basketball and spring track.
Still, who starred in basketball at English High in the 1960s and coached the team from 1984-91, also served the school as a history teacher and guidance counselor and is a member of the English High Hall of Fame. He also captained the Brandeis basketball team, then coached at Brandeis from 1991 to 2001.
He earns about $100,000 a year as Boston’s athletic director, a salary that may seem enticing, except to some of Still’s suburban colleagues.
“I think I would go crazy in his job,’’ Lincoln-Sudbury athletic director Nancy O’Neil said. “I would need to wear a Superwoman cape.’’
Still, who was honored by the Massachusetts Secondary Schools Athletic Directors Association last year for his leadership, said he aims to further improve Boston’s athletic system despite the uphill struggle.
“We have something good here,’’ he said, “but there’s so much more we can do.’’
