INDIANAPOLIS— Seven high school athletic directors, including Bobby Guthrie of North Carolina, will be inducted into the sixth Hall of Fame class of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) December 16 in National Harbor, Maryland, during banquet festivities at the 45th annual National Athletic Directors Conference co-sponsored by the NIAAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS).
This year’s conference will be held December 12-16 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
Besides Guthrie, the 2014 NIAAA Hall of Fame class includes Steve Berseth, CMAA, South Dakota; Bill Bowers, CMAA, Oregon; Bobby Guthrie, CMAA, Warren Hagman, CMAA, Nevada; Ed Lockwood, CMAA, North Dakota; and two individuals who will be inducted posthumously – John Foley, CAA, New York, and Charles Maas, Indiana.
Bobby Guthrie, CMAA
Raleigh, North Carolina
Bobby Guthrie, CMAA, is the former senior administrator for athletics and driver education of the Wake County Public Schools System in Raleigh, North Carolina, having spent his entire career promoting education-based athletics and coach education in North Carolina.
After starting his career as a teacher at Scotland High School in Laurinburg, 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. While there, Guthrie was named Colonial Athletic Conference Baseball Coach of the Year in 1989, and the North Carolina Baseball Coaches Association College Coach of the Year in 1990.
Returning to the high school ranks, Guthrie became a teacher and coach in the New Hanover school system in Wilmington in 1991. From there he moved to Wake County in 1994, where he remained until his retirement in 2013. While at Wake County, Guthrie oversaw athletic programs for 20 high schools and 31 middle schools, and was involved in planning the athletic facilities of nine new high schools. During his tenure, he 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 still serves as the NIAAA representative on the NFHS Coaches Education Committee and is chair of the NIAAA Ad Hoc Coaching Education Committee. In 2010, 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. Guthrie also served on the NIAAA Board of Directors from 2007 to 2011 and presented at the 2012 National Coaching Conference.
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. In 2010, Guthrie initiated the revision of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Middle School Athletic Manual.
Among his numerous awards, Guthrie earned an NFHS Citation in 2010, was named athletic director of the year by the NCADA in 2007 and received the NCADA Award of Merit in 2001. He was also a member of the 2014 induction class of the NCHSAA Hall of Fame and was inducted into the Southern Alamance High School Hall of Fame in 2011.
Guthrie received both his bachelor’s (1974) and master’s (1978) degrees from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he played baseball, earning the team’s Most Valuable Player Award in 1974.
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About the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA)
The NIAAA is the largest national organization for high school athletic administrators with more than 8,500 individual members. The NIAAA consists of athletic directors organizations in the 50 states plus the District of Columbia and provides an efficient system for exchange of ideas between the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) and state athletic administrators organizations as well as individual athletic administrators. The NIAAA, located in Indianapolis, Indiana, strives to preserve the educational nature of interscholastic athletics and the place of these programs in the curricula of schools. The NIAAA is a full and equal partner with the NFHS.
About the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS)
The NFHS, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is the national leadership organization for high school sports and performing arts activities. Since 1920, the NFHS has led the development of education-based interscholastic sports and performing 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 16 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 7.7 million in high school sports. As the recognized national authority on interscholastic activity programs, the NFHS conducts national meetings; sanctions interstate events; offers online publications and services for high school coaches and officials; sponsors professional organizations for high school coaches, officials, speech and debate coaches, and music adjudicators; serves as the national source for interscholastic coach training; and serves as a national information resource of interscholastic athletics and activities. For more information, visit the NFHS Web site at www.nfhs.org.
