Two-and-a-half years ago, Jeff Beggs, came out of retirement to take the position as director of athletics for APS.

“What I saw was a sleeping giant,” Beggs said of the APS athletics program.

This assessment came on the heels of a recently completed athletic audit, which found major deficiencies throughout the system. Beggs’s plan is to unite middle and high school athletic programs and to promote sports in the elementary feeder schools in order to create stronger high school teams.

An Atlanta native and a graduate of Southwest DeKalb High School and Furman University, Beggs had already been an athletic director for 20 years when he took the job.

“I thought that this was the most incredible job that anybody could ever have because there’s so much potential here,” Beggs said.

He aims to maximize that potential by realizing his vision for APS athletics.

“What I’ve found, and what my staff found, was a culture and a climate of ‘We can’t succeed,’” Beggs said. “And we wanted to create a culture, and a climate, and an atmosphere of success.”

Beggs’ basic goal is to increase the number of students who participate in athletics. He believes that being involved in sports helps keep students in school, which leads to academic success.

“Studies and research show that a child starts to begin thinking about dropping out of school as early as fourth or fifth grade,” he said. “Well if we can get them involved in something at an early age, and they can start to see ‘I want to become a Grady Gray Knight,’ or ‘I want to become a Therrell Panther,’ or ‘I want to become a South Atlanta Hornet,’ and that’s their goal, then it’s easy to say that athletics can be a piece of a great big educational pie. If we can help keep kids in school through their participation in sports, then we’ve accomplished our goal.”

Atlanta Board of Education member Cecily Harsch-Kinnane agrees with Beggs about the importance of athletics.

“I think the skills you learn in participating in any athletics, and particularly in your school athletics, promotes skills that you need to be successful academically,” Harsch-Kinnane said.

Jeff Cramer, Grady’s cross country coach for the past 16 years and a teacher for 30, also believes in sports’ ability to help students succeed.

“What [the students] tell me is that it helps them organize their life,” Cramer said. “It keeps them fit, which is good for all parts of your life, just being healthy. It keeps you healthier.”

Cramer supports Beggs’ idea to connect the middle and high schools through athletics.

“I never had a feeder program until I came to Grady, and Inman has provided us with a feeder program in cross country, which has really helped our program,” Cramer said.

Beggs and his team have made progress towards his goal of increasing the number of students involved. When Beggs became athletic director two and a half years ago, there were 4,700 student-athletes out of 50,000 students.

“This past year we had over 7,000,” he said. “I see that as a tremendous success because we’re getting more kids involved.”

Beggs hopes to push that number above 10,000 in the next year or two by involving outside programs like Girls on the Run and the Atlanta Youth Soccer Association, alumni from the schools, corporate sponsors and athletic booster clubs. Neighborhood leagues can help by getting students involved in athletics at an early age. Sponsors can help fund growth of the programs. Booster clubs and alumni can also lend their support. The Grady Booster Club is willing to work with Beggs.

“If he has ideas of interesting new equipment for Grady, new sports for Grady, new procedures to help keep things efficient at Grady,” Athletic Booster Club treasurer Duggan Lansing said, “The booster club would then go to each of the team’s representatives and help put those procedures in place, or help them ensure that they have the funds they need to have a diving team or a water polo team, or things that are new at Grady.”

Beggs believes his plan will benefit not only student-athletes, but also the larger community.

“Once we get it instituted, I really believe that our athletic program will explode,” he said. “And we will draw people back that have moved out to the suburbs. They’re going to see Atlanta Public Schools as something that is good and wholesome and positive.”