Guthrie Earns National Athletic Director Award
November 17, 2010 - Bobby Guthrie, WCPSS Senior Administrator for Athletics, is one of eight high school athletic directors from across the nation to be awarded the NFHS Citation during luncheon festivities next month at the 41st annual National Athletic Directors Conference sponsored by the National Federation of State High School Associations and the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.
NFHS Citations are presented annually to outstanding athletic directors in recognition of contributions to interscholastic athletics at the local, state and national levels. State associations nominate athletic directors for NFHS Citations, and the NFHS Board of Directors approves recipients.
Bobby Guthrie, CMAA, is the WCPSS senior administrator for athletics and driver education, and has spent his entire career promoting education-based athletics in North Carolina.
After starting his career as a teacher at Scotland High School in Laurinburg, North Carolina, Guthrie became a baseball coach at the collegiate level. He was a graduate assistant baseball coach at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill for a year before moving to the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, where he was the head baseball coach from 1983 to 1991.
Returning to the high school ranks, Guthrie became a teacher and coach in the New Hanover School System in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1991. From there he moved to Wake County, where he has been in his current position since 1994. While at Wake County, Guthrie has assisted with numerous North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) championships, developed a cheerleading coach education program, established a sportsmanship education program and initiated the Wake County Schools Sports Medicine Symposium.
Guthrie is an outspoken advocate for coaching education on the national level. He is the NIAAA representative on the NFHS Coaches Education Committee and is a certified instructor of the NFHS Fundamentals of Coaching course. Earlier this year, Guthrie was named the NFHS Coach Educator of the Year. In addition, he was the first Accredited Interscholastic Coach to be certified in the United States through the NFHS Coach Education Program.
At the state level, Guthrie served on the boards of directors of both the NCHSAA and the North Carolina Athletic Directors Association (NCADA), and he has served as chair of the NCADA Mentoring Committee since 2003. Among his numerous awards, Guthrie was named athletic director of the year by the NCADA in 2007 and received the NCADA Award of Merit in 2001.
Guthrie received both his bachelor’s (1974) and master’s (1978) degrees from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
The NFHS, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the national leadership organization for high school sports and fine arts activities. Since 1920, the NFHS has led the development of education-based interscholastic sports and fine arts activities that help students succeed in their lives. The NFHS sets direction for the future by building awareness and support, improving the participation experience, establishing consistent standards and rules for competition, and helping those who oversee high school sports and activities. The NFHS writes playing rules for 17 sports for boys and girls at the high school level. Through its 50 member state associations and the District of Columbia, the NFHS reaches more than 19,000 high schools and 11 million participants in high school activity programs, including more than 7.6 million in high school sports. As the recognized national authority on interscholastic activity programs, the NFHS conducts national meetings; sanctions interstate events; produces publications for high school coaches, officials and athletic directors; sponsors professional organizations for high school coaches, officials, spirit coaches, speech and debate coaches and music adjudicators; and serves as a national information resource of interscholastic athletics and activities. For more information, visit the NFHS Web site at www.nfhs.org.
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