State of the athletics: Northside AD Jared Adams talks about success now, challenges that await

Published 9:07 am Tuesday, April 29, 2025

By Jason O. Boyd

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Note: This is the first in a series of stories where we talk to each high school athletic director in Beaufort County. We asked them about this season, the offseason, what they are looking forward to for the start of the fall season and more.

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YEATESVILLE, N.C. — It’s been a pretty productive school year when you look at athletics at Northside.

Andrew Harding won a state title in cross country. The football team made a second-round state playoff appearance, the volleyball team advanced to the third round of the state playoffs and the first flag football team won the conference title.

Success continued with the basketball programs winning a share or an outright regular-season title. Wrestling had individuals in the state championships and cheerleading found success in tournament competition.

That success has carried over to the spring sports season as teams continue to play. We talked with Northside Athletics Director Jared Adams about the season, what’s ahead and much more.

I know there’s still a couple of weeks left as far as the school season is concerned, but what are your thoughts about how things went? You guys did very well in football, volleyball, you won a championship in flag football, you did well in basketball. 

“As a whole, sport for sport, season for season, we held our earning conference and did well in postseason play. As a whole, I would say our programs are moving in the right direction.

“We’re growing, increasing numbers, increasing interest, staying competitive. This past season was the first season in many years, probably decades, that boys and girls and JV, all three were conference champions. Now the boys were co-conference champions with Lejeune, JV was co-conference champions with Southside, and then the girls, there was no split conference champion. But as far as in the history of Northside High School, I can’t remember, it’s been over 20 years since all three teams have had a conference championship at the same time.”

So tell me what are your plans as far as the summer season? Is there anything specifically that you’ll be doing?

“So the month of June, we pretty much treat like open season. So that time I’ll do basketball workouts, there will be football workouts, there will be volleyball workouts, there will be cross country workouts. Any sport and all sports at Northside kind of coordinate their own workouts during that time.

“Normally, two to three days a week, as a coaching staff, we get together and make sure that the times don’t overlap. So if a kid wants to participate in a workout for their sport, we treat that as an offseason time to kind of, especially for freshmen, get to know the coaches, get to know what they’re getting themselves into before tryout day, especially for something like basketball. They can come in during a workout time and see if it’s something that they’re used to, they want to be a part of, kind of see what we’re about.

“And then in the month of July, all sports shut down but fall sports. And we treat the month of July throughout the rest of fall for fall sports.

“It’s a good way to get the kids together, build some team camaraderie, knock some of the rust off that they had in the offseason. I know for basketball, we’re going to have a summer camp. As soon as school gets out for the kids, we did that last year for the first time in many years.

“And then what we’re also doing, we’ll probably go to the Showcase again, Phenom Hoops Showcase, boys and girls. We did that last year. It was a good experience.”

What specifically do you feel like needs working on or needs improvement, I guess, going into the offseason, from what you’ve seen this school year?

“We’ve done a good job of kind of giving the school a facelift inside and out over the last, I’d say, five or six years. I mean, the school is over 30 years old, and a lot of our facilities are still over 30 years old. Our track does need some work in places.

“I’ve gone out there and got some Flex Seal and tried to patch it. Our goal is to hopefully, at some juncture, repair the track. We would like to replace the backstops at the baseball and softball fields. The fencing needs to be repaired.

“From a resource, the cheer team is wanting a competition cheer mat, and the wrestling team is wanting an additional wrestling mat so they can host quad meets. So those are things we’re kind of looking into trying to budget for.

“So we kind of look at the budget, look at what’s manageable, look at what we can afford, what boosters will help us with, and that’s kind of how we attack it.”

Is there anything specifically that you felt like you could have worked on? Do you feel optimistic about some of the sports teams going into the next season?

“I think as a whole, we’re growing from an athletic side of things. I mean, football numbers are up. We’re having a JV and a varsity program. Basketball numbers are up. We normally carry 13 or 14 on girls’ roster. Volleyball, we provide JV and varsity volleyball. We’re pretty competitive in all sports, and the kids show up and are ready to compete and get better. And I think that’s a big slide of coaches to have, because sport for sport, all the coaches kind of have the same mindset of, when you’re involved in the program, you need to be bought in, and you need to give it 100%, because that effort will translate in the scheme of things.”

So I guess the last thing is, what are you excited about? What are your expectations as far as the realignment and the conferences?It doesn’t really change things for you, but everybody else is changing to some degree, certainly across the state.

“You know, I do think it was needed for eight classifications, especially for a small school. I mean, even take a school like the size of Columbia with 220 kids, 230 kids in the school, having … expecting them to compete against another 1A school with 550, 570 kids, it’s not the same playing field. Because you’ve got to think in a small school, every 40 or 50 kids, you’re going to bring in two or three more athletes.

“So by breaking down eight classifications, now in the smaller schools, it’s more of a level playing field. We’re one of the bigger 1A schools, but we’re just going to get smaller. Right now, we’re probably the biggest we’re going to be, I would say, for the next few years.

“I would … by looking at numbers coming from Northeast and Bath and what we’re going to graduate, we will never be above 370 again. I can see us trending to the 350 mark. I think we’re the fourth-largest 1A high school in the new classification system.

“I know the big debacle has always been charter schools. Well, it really hurts basketball because charter schools, they don’t have football. So most sports don’t really see the charter school effect until they get to basketball season, and basketball and baseball, they really are predominant.

“But there’s a big difference between a charter school in Durham like Voyager, and Bear Grass Charter School in Martin County. I mean, it’s not even in the same ballpark. So a lot of charter schools, because of the new classification system, they’re bumping up to 2A.

“So you’ll still have a few 1A charter schools, but it’ll be true 1A charter schools, like your Bear Grass or your Wilson Prep. I mean, that’s a lot different than being in Raleigh-Durham or Cary or just outside of Raleigh. I mean, that area is filled with charter schools.”

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