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Note: This is the sixth 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.

Keith Mitchell’s job at Beaufort County Schools is a little bit different than what the athletics directors do at Washington, Northside and Southside high schools.

He more than stays busy making sure the schools have the right things they need to play sports, get from here to there and overall just making sure the experience for the athletes and coaches is a positive one, full of growth and the chance to showcase their talents.

There is a lot to feel good about, from the work he did to help bring flag football to the public schools last fall and making sure things like EpiPens and first aid kits for middle and high schools are available. There’s also a lot of goals for 2025-26 to work on during the summer.

We spoke with Mitchell to get his thoughts on the past school year.

What are your impressions of the first year of sports and athletics in the county? What was some of the things that you liked the most about what you saw from the public schools and their performances?

“I thought we had a great school year. I thought it went real well. Participation was up around the county. We had student athletes and coaches doing some great things. We had student athletes making all-conference, going to states. We had a state champion (Northside’s Andrew Harding in cross country). We had a conference player of the year (Washington’s Keondrick Melton in football). We had a golfer make a hole-in-one (Northside’s Tyler Radcliffe). And we had coaches who earned coach of the year for her respective conference (Southside’s Misty Mooring and Northside’s Michelle Leathers).

“So things are up going up and moving, so we’re excited about that. We were also able to add women’s flag football to our high schools, which I thought went over very, very well, so I’m excited about that. Last year and this upcoming year, we were able to purchase AEDs, automated external defibrillators, EpiPens and brand new first aid kits for all of our middle schools and high schools and athletic departments so that they’ll have these important items on site during games.

“What I like most about what we did this year is that sports take student-athletes. I like seeing sports take student athletes to the next academic and athletic level. We had several student athletes sign scholarships that’ll take them places they’d, you know, never have that opportunity to go without sports. So that’s important to me. We’re moving our kids on, so I just thought we had a great year.”

What didn’t work or what did you feel like maybe fell short, that you want to kind of focus on or maybe you had the schools pay attention to, coming up with the next school year?

“Well, there’s always areas for improvement, and we always want to be proactive and not reactive when it comes to those areas. So when it comes to dealing with those areas of improvement how we want to do that, you know, we get together as middle school ADs and then as high school ADs during the summer to share best practices that work for us and to also share those things that didn’t work real well for us. So we can learn from one another and to be able to put awesome athletic programs together for our student athletes. One of my goals for next year is for Beaufort County to be ejection-free. Sportsmanship is a huge part of athletics and we always want our opponents to remember us as the team that played hard but did it the right way.”

What’s the rest of your summer looking like? What are some of the things that you’ll be doing to kind of get ready for the next school year, because it’ll be here before you know it.

“That’s right, it always creeps up on us. You know, last summer I worked hard with the county ADs from Pitt and Craven County and the Carolina Panthers to get the women’s flag football established. We’ll do that again, so to make sure we’re ready for that when it comes around. Always trying to get our coaching contracts completed and board approved during the summer so when the fall season comes around, our coaches are ready to roll day one.”

What are you looking forward to the most for the upcoming season? 

You know, it’s just exciting, athletics to me is exciting anyway, so with things that we’ve got going on, Northside and Washington rekindling their football contest, it is going to be fun to watch, and you know, two new head coaches inside the county with Coach Q (Andrea Quinerly at Southside) and coach (Brian) Pascal (at Washington). So excited to see them have success, and so it’s going to be a fun fall. Flag football’s going to be taken off again, and I think that’s really important for our female athletes. I think they really enjoy that, so we’ll be working hard to make sure that’s successful as well.”