MOULTRIE – Less than a year after joining the Georgia High School Association staff as an associate director, Kevin Giddens is taking over one of the organization’s most important positions.

With Tommy Whittle stepping back to a part-time role, Giddens will become the coordinator of GHSA’s football program.

A former longtime football coach, Giddens should be in his comfort zone.

“Tommy wants to take a step back,” Giddens said of Whittle, who has been involved in teaching, coaching and administration for some 45 years. “He’s been doing it a long time. But he’ll still be available to help. He knows all the shortcuts, so the learning curve for me will be reduced. His experience will be there.”

Giddens played football at Georgia Southern, was an assistant coach at Colquitt County from 1994-1997 and was the head football coach and athletic director at Coffee for three seasons before returning to Colquitt County, where he was an assistant principal and the school’s athletic director.

As the athletic director, he was in charge of one of the largest departments in the state and the Packers football team won two state football championships during his watch.

He also served as the Packers offensive line coach from 2008-2011 under Rush Propst.

And Giddens also had some history with the GHSA before being named an associate director last May after working 18 months with the Moultrie-Colquitt County Parks and Recreation Authority.

He served as the Region 1-AAAAAA secretary from 2002-2015 and was on the state executive committee as the Region 1-AAAAAA representative from 2012-2016.

When he joined the GHSA last year, he was placed in charge of soccer and cross country and helped Whittle with the football, one-act play and literary duties.

Whittle will continue to do one-act play, literary and lacrosse.

Giddens said the GHSA’s preparations for the 2019 football season are pretty much complete.

“Everything’s in place,” he said. “I’m just trying not to screw anything up.”

Giddens says he does not expect many changes in football next season.

A decision on the future of the state championship football games has not been decided.

Last year, a conflict with a professional soccer league championship scheduled for Mercedes-Benz Stadium on the same weekend as the GHSA state title games forced those games to be moved to the middle of the following week.

Despite the inconvenience – especially to out-of-town fans – of the state championship games being played on a Tuesday and Wednesday, Giddens said the GHSA was “very pleased” with attendance.

He said the GHSA would like to continue to be able to play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

It is unlikely that the championship games would return to the home fields of one of the finalists.

“Some adults might not think it’s a big deal,” Giddens said of the championship games being at Mercedes-Benz, as they were in the Georgia Dome for many years.

“But the kids get to play where the SEC championship and the Super Bowl were played. They get to say they played on the same field that Tom Brady played on.”

Giddens said he enjoys working for GHSA executive director Robin Hines, who also is a former Colquitt County High assistant football coach.

“He’s had to make a lot of tough calls,” he said of Hines, who became the executive director in June 2017. “But he puts a lot of thought in them.”

One issue that is expected to come before the GHSA executive board later this year is re-classification.

A meeting of the GHSA’s reclassification committee will be held on Thursday. According to the GHSA website, “This meeting is to discuss possible changes to the reclassification process as previously discussed with the GHSA Board of Trustees. No votes will be taken at this working meeting.”

 

The 2019-2020 school year is the fourth with Georgia’s high schools being broken down into seven classifications.

Among the topics to be discussed Thursday is a return to a six-class format.

Giddens said “it looks very favorable.”

It is likely that south Georgia will still have just one region in the state’s largest classification, Giddens said.

Currently, Region 1-7A includes just four schools: Camden County, Colquitt County, Lowndes and Tift County.

A Region 1 placed in the highest classification under a six-classification format that could start in 2020-2021 would most likely include more than those four schools.

Giddens declined to say which schools would be included in such a region. He said that decision would likely wait until the 2019 FTE (full-time equivalent) numbers are released this fall.

The four-school region has created scheduling problems in several sports and necessitated a power ranking system to determine whether the No. 4 team in Region 1-7A would qualify for state tournaments.

Giddens sounds as if he is looking forward to helping the GHSA in its role of overseeing the state’s sports and other extracurricular activities.

“I really like what I’m doing,” he says. “I really think everyone in this office is doing their best.

“And I have a better understanding of just how hard the people in this office work.”