Hartsville’s Griggs enjoying role as Athletic Director

David Shelton

Staff Writer

Hartsville – Having been a coach for 22 years prior to taking over as athletic director at Hartsville High School, Phyllis Griggs admits she sometimes misses being in the midst of competition.

Griggs directed the highly successful girl’s tennis program for 22 years before stepping down. She also dabbled in softball for a few years. Her energies these days are directed towards the overall success of the entire athletic department.

“I miss coaching some but not as much as I did when I first stepped down,” says Griggs. “Honestly, there are some days when I think I would rather be coaching than handling the issues that might crop up. It can be a real challenge at times but overall I really enjoy doing what I do now.

“My biggest fear when I stopped coaching was that I would lose the close contact with the kids, something I really enjoyed as a coach. Fortunately I have been able to sustain that aspect. I go to as many athletic events as I can get to, sometimes more than one in a day. I still get great pleasure from watching our athletes perform.”

One of Griggs’ primary duties as athletic director is to hire coaches when openings occur within the department. Griggs was a little busy this spring and early summer as several new coaches will take jobs with Hartsville this year.

Former Hartsville volleyball player Heather Ponder-Dyar will be the school’s new junior varsity volleyball coach. Taking over the boy’s and girl’s cross country teams is Kay Krblich and Anthony Heilbronn has been hired as a new track coach.

Michael Lynch will be the school’s new wrestling coach and Molly Soto is the school’s new girl’s tennis coach. Taking over the junior varsity girl’s basketball team is Rick Fountain.

Hired as swimming coaches this fall are Jackie Dugger and Nikki Harrell and Eric Brown, another former Red Fox, has been hired as the junior varsity head football coach.

Hartsville is moving down from class AAAA to AAA this fall and Griggs feels the move will be a good one for the program. Many fans were upset that the program is taking a step down but Griggs says the move will allow Hartsville to play schools closer to home, especially in football.

“I think it helps us financially because of the games that we can schedule now with schools a lot closer to us,” said Griggs. “In AAAA, in terms of football, we had to worry a lot about the points system and we could not play some smaller schools that were more natural as rivals. We don’t have that worry now. We go from being one of the smaller AAAA schools to the second largest AAA school. Our travel situation is much better in the new region and let’s face it, we all need to save money these days.

“I think it’s a good thing for us in the long run. We will continue to be competitive in all of our sports and our coaches won’t work any less harder just because we’re in AAA.”