Steven Craft, Fulton County Schools AD
Today’s interviewee is Fulton County Schools athletic director Steven Craft. The interview was conducted by Hannah Goodin and Jon Nelson of GPB Sports on the “Football Fridays in Georgia” podcast. Three Fulton County teams are in the semifinals tonight. Milton is playing Mill Creek and Hughes is playing Rome in a doubleheader beginning at 5 p.m. today that GPB Sports is televising from Atlanta’s Lakewood Stadium. The third Fulton semifinalist, Roswell, is playing Gainesville at McEachern’s Cantrell Stadium. All three Fulton schools had to move their games to neutral sites because their stadiums didn’t meet GHSA minimums for seating. Craft, also a GHSA board of trustees member, discusses the logistics of setting up those games and the GHSA rules that precipitated them. The full interview can be heard here. This excerpt is edited by permission to read easier and fit GHSF Daily’s Four Questions format.
1. Three Fulton teams are in the semifinals. What does that say about football in your area? “It just says we have amazing kids, amazing coaches, amazing community support and tremendous district support because it takes all of us in there. But, you know, at the end of the day, this is about our kids, this is about our coaches, our communities, and everything that they pour into this. When you advance this deep into the playoffs, you have talent but also luck. But it comes down to that commitment that all of the stakeholders have in place in order to make this happen. So as a district athletic director, this is one of the proudest accomplishments to have three teams in the state semis. And we had five in the quarterfinals [including Westlake and Creekside]. So it means an amazing accomplishment for our district and our schools and most importantly our kids.”
2. Once you knew which of your teams were going to the semifinals, how immediate were the conversations getting all of these things in motion? How busy was your weekend? “The phone calls started as soon as I was driving home from Langston's game. [Hughes beat Woodward Academy 56-28 in the 6A quarterfinals.] That was the second game I went to Friday night. [Craft also attended the Creekside-Warner Robins game about six miles away] And I knew I had three teams that qualified. So I started reaching out right then. I was reaching out with Gainesville's athletic director. I was getting a number for Rome's athletic director, and I was reaching out to the head coach at Mill Creek because I had his contact number. So I started that conversation Friday night and probably worked till about 1:30, 2 that night and then started working the phones again probably 7:30 Saturday morning because we had three teams designated as the home teams. At one point I had three venues and lost one of those venues. ... Just so you all know, when the home team stadium does not meet the capacity, then it is the responsibility of the home school to secure a facility that does meet it unless the opponent agrees to waive the seating requirement.”
3. How did things transpire from there? “In this case, all three [visiting] schools asked to have a stadium that meets the stadium requirements, and that is their right from the White Book [the GHSA bylaws]. I was fortunate [that] McEachern was more than happy to host a game for us, so we put Roswell and Gainesville there. I had already secured with APS [Atlanta Public Schools] to have the Langston-Rome game at Lakewood. We weren't able to use their other facility [Henderson Stadium, formerly known as Grady Stadium, in Midtown], which is where I was kind of hoping to put the Mill Creek-Milton game. So at that point I started the conversations with the Mill Creek administration. OK, here's the options we can do. Here's some choices. Would you like for me to look at this, this and this? Are there any circumstances you would consider playing this game in Milton? And they said no. I asked them about the Forsyth [County] high schools. Their stadiums are much larger than ours. Do you want me to reach out to those schools? And they said no. So at that point, the venue that I had available was to do a doubleheader at Lakewood. So I started working on it, started having conversations with my counterpart, Jasper Jewell, who is the athletic director for APS, and Corey Collier, who was his coordinator, and started having conversations like, hey, is a doubleheader doable? And we started working through the logistics. I reached back out to Mill Creek and said, hey, here's what I can do. Here are the options. Are you interested in this [the doubleheader]? And they said no, we're not interested in that. I called a few other places that [ultimately] weren't interested in hosting us. And so I'm like, OK, here's where we are. We're going to do a doubleheader. And we finalized everything and signed the contracts Sunday. And I just kept working most of the day Sunday on the logistics.”
4. When it comes to Lakewood, how is it going to work specifically? Do you have to completely clear the stadium out and then re-ticket everyone? “We’ve got two games set up, and that is a little unique for us in Fulton County Schools but not unique for APS. They routinely have doubleheaders, and they had a doubleheader in the second round. So we've got one game set up for 5 [p.m.], Milton versus Mill Creek. And then we will start the next game ... 30 minutes after the first. So hopefully we stay on schedule. Normally with an event like this, you would have to clear the stadium. But the reality is Lakewood Stadium holds close to 12,000 people, so we're going to have a lot of space for the fans. We are not going to have to clear the stadium. All the tickets are done electronically. So Milton and Mill Creek will be buying from their link. The Langston and Rome fans will be buying from their link. So you don't have to worry about the separation of money and making sure the schools are getting what they're entitled to do. If some of the fans from Mill Creek and from Milton want to watch the second game, they're going to be welcome. ... We should have plenty of space for everybody to be there on Friday.”