Carly Dougherty: The Backbone of the Operation

THE WOODLANDS, TX -- Have you ever wondered how a huge high school's athletic department operates? Chances are you haven't because everything runs like clockwork. It seems like the only time you hear about things these days is when something negative occurs. When the school in question is The Woodlands High School with almost 5000 students, nothing negative ever happens. Things run too smoothly for anything negative to pop up. It's like when you're watching a football game,,,you don't even notice the referees if they're doing their job right.

Well, it's time you met TWHS athletic secretary and impromptu referee, Carly Dougherty. Carly is the reason you have no clue what goes into running the athletic department. The only people who truly appreciate all that Carly does is head football coach/athletic director Jim Rapp and every player and coach who walk the halls of The Woodlands High School. You're about to find out just how much Carly does.

In interviewing this extremely awesome human being for this article, when I asked what her job description is, she looked at me and said, "Are you sure you want to do this with a tape recorder? I can send you bullet points which would be much easier for you."

I was thinking it would be five or six tasks and nothing major. I mean seriously how long could the list be? I humored Carly and said, "Sure, we'll do it your way."

It wasn't until I got back to the office and looked at the list when I started really appreciating Carly's work ethic.

Let's learn more about Carly Dougherty in this week's Woodlands Online Profile of the Week...

Please share what the Athletic Secretary's position entails. I mean EVERYTHING.

• Maintaining schedules for boys’ and girls’ sports: 17 sports not separating out boys and girls.
• Collect and submitting all travel forms (for meal $), vehicle rentals, and hotels in time for the teams to travel. Making sure all paperwork is done correctly before submitting to the district travel department. This includes for McCullough JHS athletic department
• Submitting all recaps for each time a team travels to a game, meet or tournament. So, the coaches get reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses. This includes for McCullough JHS athletic department.
• Ensure that all varsity football travel paperwork for students and employees are complete and submitted.
• Traveling the district office to pick up any checks for entry fees, meals, or hotels.
• Helping maintain all teams’ budgets
• For Varsity Football: contact other schools about paperwork such as rosters, parking maps, ticketing links, good sportsmanship leagues, and stadium policies.
• Communicate with Woodforest Bank and Moorhead stadium coordinators to ensure that we have everything we need.
• Communicating with custodial staff, administration and maintenance staff to ensure that all sports have what they need for games.
• Putting in Requisitions for all equipment, uniforms and grounds keeping etc. for the department.
• This includes for McCullough JHS athletic department.
• Work with varies booster clubs by answer question, making sure they have keys to the concessions and that all concession workers follow the health department guide lines.
• Entering all online tickets for each home Sporting event into our ticketing system.
• Organizing, communicating and administrate Season tickets for Varsity Football at Woodforest Bank Stadium: Sending out multiple emails to current season ticket holders for the next seasons renewals, season ticket upgrades and for new season ticket holders.
• Call each season ticket holder that had not renewed to make sure they received my emails and help them renew if needed.
• Meet with each season ticket holder who would like to upgrade their tickets.
• Creating all season passes for home games and individual tickets for sub varsity and Varsity games
• Making sure all head coaches have the ticketing information to send out to our opposing teams along with parking maps and campus maps to help all of our patrons.
• Scheduling all ticket taker for every home game to sell tickets and check online tickets. This can take place on 3 different campuses. TWHS main campus, TWHS 9th grade campus and McCullough JHS campus for Baseball.
• Making sure there is a cash option for tickets for each game.
• Balancing each cash box for every home game and submitting the deposit to our financial secretary.
• Maintaining and submitting all the paperwork to the district athletic office for officials to be paid along with any new W-9 that are turned in by the officials.
• Help with the scheduling of our athletic facilities for playoff games within our district and out of district teams.
• Emailing and collecting all paperwork and contracts for playoff games.
• Organize luncheons for Inservice days a few times a year.
• Help organize food and other necessities if we host districts or area games.
• Order and distribute office supplies.
• Work with yearbook and our Newspaper staff with sports related topics.
• Collect and deliver package from the loading dock.
• Organizing National Signing Day in February. This year we had 50 + students sign with a university or College to play sports. This includes: send out announcements, giving out and collecting all permission slips, creating the graphics to be displayed on the scoring table. (This is the most stressful event of the year)
• Work with our letterman jacket company to select dates and times that our athletes can be fitted for their well-deserved letterman jackets. Make sure the jackets and letters are ordered in a timely fashion. Deliver the jackets to the coaches or students when they arrive.
• Collect and organizes all camp information onto a document with interactive links.
• Communicate with feeder school about summer camps.
• During the summer I help the trainers out by accepting and scanning physicals into a google drive folder.
• Answer any in coming phone calls for the department.
• Answer any texts and/or phone calls from coaches to help them with what ever issue they are having. Whether it be with a hotel, rental vehicle, ticketing or whatever comes up.
• Most importantly make sure coffee is made every morning.

Unbelievable! That list seems like it would be difficult for five people to complete..

Now let's learn about Carly Dougherty, the person...

Where did you get your start in the education field? Why?

I have a few learning difficulties and I wanted to show the students that a label does not define you. How you handle the tasks at hand and how hard you work does. I wanted to impart that everyone has value and a job to do no matter what it is that you do. I started in education in 2012 at Mccullough Junior High High School.

Where are you from? High School? Activities in or out of school?

I am from Quakertown, Pennsylvania. I graduated from Quakertown Community High School in 1994. I was involved with choir, theater and was on the swim team. I taught Special Olympics swimming, soccer and gymnastics while I was in high school which was one of the best experiences a young person can have.

Family?

I have been married for almost 27 awesome years to my husband, Kevin. We have two adult children who both attended and graduated from TWHS. Alison is 21 and Kylie is 26.

What do you enjoy most about working at TWHS?

What I enjoy most is how the school is like one big family. Not only the athletic department, but the whole school. I look forward to going to work every day. We laugh and support each other on a professional and personal level. Spending 40 hours doing a job is not work when you love what you do and who you work for and with.

Head volleyball coach Terri Wade talks about just how awesome Carly is...

"Carly doesn't just work for Highlander athletics, she shows up daily for everyone. You will see her interacting with students and helping teachers. She takes care of us all at TWHS. Carly will put on an extra pot of coffee in the morning knowing more than one coach had a late night and they will be in her office looking for a pick-me-up. She keeps us all in line and organized to make deadlines. She always has our back working diligently to help with last minute playoff arrangements and travel requests. Carly is very much a part of our athletic family, and she is the glue that keeps us all together."

Carly Is most assuredly the straw that stirs the TWHS athletics drink.

I'll leave you with some final words from Carly...

"I really love my job. It's the best job and the best boss (Jim Rapp) I've ever had."

Please feel free to drop in on Carly to say hello if you"re ever at the high school.

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