Last weekend, Green Hope athletic director Mr. Robbie St. John received the North Carolina Athletic Directors’ Association (NCADA) Citation Award. This honor is granted to athletic directors (ADs) who are relatively new to the field and are nominated by other ADs for outstanding work in their position. For St. John, he still does not know who nominated him for the award, but is appreciative that his work, and the work of Green Hope coaches, is being seen in such a positive light. In an interview with the GH Falcon, St. John attributed Green Hope’s positive environment as a key factor in his success thus far: “I do feel like that because of the support system I have here, it’s allowed me to kind of hit the ground running. I was given the ability to just come in and be like, ‘Hey guys, we’re going to pivot quickly, and we’re going to move quickly.’” This momentum has allowed Green Hope athletics to flourish under the support of St. John and set the school apart in the eyes of others.
St. John also acknowledged that the award is more than just a testimony to his work, but of the various coaches at Green Hope as well. He compared his role to that of a “coach for coaches,” saying that, “I feel like I laid a framework, but they’re doing the work, right? And so this award is just a reflection of their hard work.” St. John’s role entails more than just overseeing the coaches, however. In addition to oversight, he also does scheduling and ordering, raises money for athletics, is in charge of athletic branding, social media, managing the facilities, mowing the grass and much more.
In order to succeed as a program, Green Hope athletics has changed significantly to adapt to the needs of athletes and coaches. The change that St. John says that he is most proud of was one of the very first changes he made to athletics as a whole: “When I first got here, I sat down with every head coach and I asked them: What’s working? What needs improvement and how best could I support their program? And overwhelmingly, the two things that they felt like needed improvement were communication and transparency with our finances.” Since then, St. John has made it his mission to get coaches the information they need to be successful. Now, “We have preseason and post-season conferences, we have full coaches meetings, just trying to make sure that they get the information they need, but at the same time, they still feel heard.” While giving them guidance, St. John also emphasized the importance of giving coaches autonomy within their program. He stressed that his job is making sure that they are able to do theirs the right way.
Amassing 55 state championships in its time since re-opening in 1999, Green Hope athletics has a lot to be proud of. St. John, however, measures his success through the changes he sees in the school and the smiles he brings to people’s faces. When asked what his favorite memory with the athletics department was, it was impossible for him to pick just one. The first was “Watching our unified athletes who are paired up with different members of our student body, watching the interaction between them, and them getting to compete and how proud their parents are. I think that’s a special moment.” In addition to unified track meets, St. John also cited unified basketball games as another special moment, and recalled seeing the student section go all out for those athletes as another particularly special moment. As for seeing other changes come to fruition, St. John said: “I thought it was amazing that 45 minutes before kickoff of the first football game this year, our students’ section was completely packed out. That’s a moment where it’s like a culmination of, instead of where it used to be, I would look back and it’s halfway through the first quarter, and we’re still getting people to come in. I thought that was pretty cool.”
With such a successful career at Green Hope already, St. John hopes to build upon the framework that he has constructed in recent years and continue to uphold the school’s standard of excellence. Regardless of whether or not the athletic programs are winning, St. John wants the result to be a product of doing things the right way. “I think referees enjoy coming here again. We get a lot of positive comments from referees about just the way we treat them and things like that. We get requests to host conference and regional events here again. And I think that that’s just again, it’s one thing that we have a community that supports our athletics, and also we have coaches that work really hard.” Establishing a community where everyone feels welcome is at the forefront of St. John’s platform as AD and will continue to stay there. “Five years down the road, my expectation is is that, one, we have coaches that are thrilled to death to be here, and we have athletes who feel like that we’re offering them an opportunity to become the best version of themselves, a community that supports that, and then from the outside looking in, people are just like, that’s how it’s supposed to be done.”
With an ambitious future ahead of him and a successful career thus far, St. John is more than deserving of the NCADA citation award, which recognizes his work, as well as the many talented coaches of Green Hope, and puts them in the spotlight.
