As a rookie Athletic Director at Miami (Fla.) Sunset Senior High School in 1984, George Phelan was encouraged by a colleague to attend the National Athletic Directors' Conference. He did, and was immediately taken in by all the opportunities to get involved.

This past December, 24 conventions later (of which he's missed only one), Phelan was awarded an NFHS Citation, which honors athletic directors for their contributions at the local, state, and national levels. In between, Phelan, CAA, has twice been President of the Florida Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (FIAAA) and served on many committees at the state and national levels, including the NIAAA Awards Committee and FIAAA Higher Education Committee.

At Sunset, where he also serves as Guidance Counselor, Phelan has seen his boys' and girls' bowling, boys' soccer, girls' volleyball, and boys' and girls' tennis teams capture state championships. The girls' tennis squad holds the state record for most consecutive titles with 10. In 2007, Phelan was named the State of Florida Athletic Administrator of the Year by the FIAAA.

In this interview, he talks about the changes he's seen in high school athletics, how he balances his guidance counselor and athletic director duties, and Florida's steroid testing program.

AM: Sunset has almost 3,000 students. What are the challenges of being at such a large school?
Phelan: The most difficult aspect is that we have to limit the number of kids who can participate. We've actually had as many as 5,000 students in some years, and I've seen 150 kids go out for the soccer team. We've tried to implement more j.v. and freshman teams and steer kids towards sports that don't have cuts, like track and field, cross country, and swimming.

What advice do you give your coaches on making cuts?
I try not to micromanage my coaches, but I do have some general guidelines I give them to ensure the process is fair. Most importantly, coaches must be able to validate the procedure they followed. When I get a call from an upset parent whose kid was cut, the coach needs to be able to explain their decision-making process to me. And my coaches know that "I took any kid over six-foot and 150 pounds" won't fly.

How do you deal with those parent phone calls?
This is one of the major changes that's taken place over my career. When parents used to call, it was for advice on how to handle a situation with their kid. They'd even call just to compliment a coach. I don't get those calls anymore. Now I get the critical phone calls. Today's parents feel they know more about coaching than the coach.

I often find myself defending a coach's decision. I let parents know it's not their role to decide who's going to play and who's not. I always stand behind my coaches, and I've come to the point where I tell parents, "If you're dissatisfied, your son or daughter doesn't have to play." And that's really unfortunate.

What else has changed during your two decades as an athletic director?
A big one is how student-athletes and parents think about college scholarships. More and more, and earlier and earlier, parents are saying, "My kid needs a scholarship. How is the coach going to make that happen?"

As much as I try to explain that their child is the one responsible for attaining a scholarship--much more so than the coach--parents really don't want to hear it. They figure since their kid played soccer for three years, it's the responsibility of the coach to get them a scholarship. I see a new attitude of, "What am I going to get out of this?"

Connected to that is recruiting at the high school level. Amazingly, it still goes on. I'll talk to a parent or child who says, "We talked to the coach at such and such high school and he said he'd get us a college scholarship. Will you get us a scholarship?" When I try to explain that's not the way it works and that's not a promise my coach can make, the kid usually goes to another school.

I've also seen a tremendous change in the academic part of college recruiting. Academics are much, much more important now. Colleges are sending information packets out to my good students who also happen to be athletes, not just my good athletes who also happen to be students. Colleges are looking for kids who are going to participate for four years and graduate. The kids who are getting it done academically get much more attention than they did 15 years ago, and that's a good thing.

How do you handle being a guidance counselor and athletic director?
I don't split up my day at all, but instead intermingle my responsibilities. As an athletic director, sometimes you're just putting out fires all day long--meeting with coaches to discuss an ejection or making sure you have a bus for a game. I can't really say, "Sorry, I can't deal with the fact that your bus hasn't shown up."

I keep a detailed calendar and constantly communicate with the people around me. If I have a meeting at the middle school and I'll be out of the building for a little while, people need to know that. My assistant athletic director and business manager can fill in for me from time to time, so that really helps.

Do you have any advice for athletic directors on working with guidance counselors?
It is imperative that someone in the guidance department understands NCAA eligibility. It's really easy for a counselor to say, "Oh yeah, you have a 2.0, it's right here on your report card." But a report card GPA is not the official GPA that dictates NCAA eligibility. Or a counselor may tell a student-athlete to take liberal arts math because math isn't a strong subject for them, but that isn't a college recommended course--while the kid can graduate with it, it won't count toward their eligibility. It's very easy for misinformation to be handed out, so it's extremely important that athletic directors have a solid liaison in the guidance department.

Before becoming athletic director you were a very successful wrestling coach, and then also coached cross country and badminton. Why did you take on the additional sports?
I like to see kids involved, and early in my career if it meant coaching more, then that's what I did. When I was a wrestling coach, there was nobody willing to take the cross country team, and I didn't want to see it fall by the wayside. I was in preseason conditioning with my wrestlers, making them run, and I said, "Guess what guys. We're going to be on the cross country team."

Badminton came about in a similar way. I played in my backyard and on intramural teams in college and I loved the game. When the badminton coach said she couldn't do it anymore and they were going to disband the team, I said I would take over. We had an outstanding linebacker from our football team who was also my state runner-up wrestler--a big guy, about 220 pounds--and he played badminton. After that, I never had a problem with people saying, "Badminton? We don't want to go out for badminton!" I eventually had to make cuts.

The Florida legislature discontinued its funding for high school steroid testing last year. Were you disappointed?
No, I wasn't. The one year we tested, it was really a waste of funds. The money would have been better spent on educational programs. I never saw the advantage of trying to legislate the proper actions of high school athletes. They can't possibly understand the true consequences of using steroids if we don't give them the information. They just get caught and aren't eligible anymore. Those kids need to be informed of the real dangers, and I hope in the future we can funnel that money toward education.

You have almost-perfect national and state athletic director conference attendance. Why are the conferences so important to you?
I can't think of a conference or a workshop where I didn't hear something valuable I could put to use. Whether it was a fundraising idea, a way of dealing with parents, how to improve sportsmanship, or developing an awards program, there's always something to learn. There is also camaraderie in sharing what's going on in my part of the country, hearing what's going on in other regions, and finding some common ground to deal with the situation.

What has been your favorite committee to work on?
At the state level, I'm on the higher education committee, and each year we give out awards named after a tennis player who died in an accident. We have a silent auction, get corporate donations, and do other fundraisers so we're able to provide $1,000 scholarships to 12 scholar-athletes. There are six to eight of us on the committee, and we look over hundreds of applications. It is amazing to see what some of our best athletes have achieved academically. When I give the awards out and read off some of the accomplishments, everybody is in awe. That part is very rewarding and is my motivation for being in education.

With all you have going on, how do you find any work-life balance?
Fortunately, my kids were all involved in athletics growing up. In fact, I left coaching and became athletic director so I could see my kids more. I would get home from practice and my wife would tell me how my daughter's swim meet went and I realized I didn't want to just hear about it, I wanted to be there watching it myself. Being an athletic director involves a lot more time than being a coach, but it is my time to dictate. It is much more under my own control.