Jay Russell, GHSA assistant executive director
Today’s interviewee is Jay Russell, the Georgia High School Association’s assistant executive director and football coordinator. Russell discusses how his office and GHSA member schools have dealt with Hurricane Helene and the postponement of more than half of this week’s football games.
1. What have the past two days been like for you as football coordinator? How many phone calls have you gotten? “I have been inundated. Between calls and texts, I’ve gotten over 100 at least. Yesterday things just kind of got crazy. It’s been organized pandemonium, so to speak. It’s part of the job. We can’t control the weather. Our people [member schools] have done for the most part a really good job of communicating with each other and rescheduling games and securing officials. It’s gone as smoothly as it could under the circumstances. We just do the best we can. I’m in the midst of documenting all game changes, and that’s going to be in the area of 75-100 games. And that’s if the schools still scheduled to play tomorrow [Friday] still get to play.”
2. What is the process for a school that wants to move a game? “Yesterday morning [Wednesday], I sent out an email to all of our football contacts and school ADs and system ADs and let them know that it’s up to the schools to communicate with each other and to communicate with the game officials and if they have to move a game to Monday that they need permission from me to do that because it might be playing two games in one week. You have to have GHSA permission for that. So that’s it. It’s pretty simple. Most have followed the procedures and made changes. We still have a few conflicts stirring, but I expected them to be solved by the end of the day.” [GHSA bylaws prohibit playing two football games in a week. If an exception is granted, the GHSA recommends that the second game be played Saturday, but that remains up to the schools.]
3. Are there challenges in moving a game that most wouldn’t realize? “I always worry about officials. When I coached, I was more nervous about officials showing up than the actual game itself. We are emphasizing great communication between the schools and the officials. The schools know when they’re playing, but there’s a third party involved, the officials, so that’s a pet peeve of mine.” [The GHSA has 24 officials associations that are assigned games, but individual officials are not full-time employees who are required to cover postponed games. So the associations often scramble to find coverage for rescheduled games, and schools’ choices of date and time are influenced by the officials’ availability. For each varsity game, six officials work the field and two work the game and play clocks.]
4. As football coordinator, what do you spend most of your time doing in a regular week? “I talk to coaches and officials every week, trying to make sure we have all the games covered with officials and troubleshoot when we have issues, and when we have sportsmanship issues especially. We have to rule on those things. So officials and sportsmanship issues are where I spend most of my time.”
