Things have changed in the high school sports world since Jeffery Sullivan first took over as Director of Athletics for Montgomery County Public Schools in 2017.

Name, image, and likeness has emerged as a way for student-athletes to make money off their sport. Girls flag football and pickleball are in their second season as varsity sports in Montgomery County and thriving, the latter of which was implemented by MCPS at all of its high schools — the first district to do so in the country, according to Sullivan.

And sports academies, where youth athletes can train in elite facilities at the same place where they learn chemistry and algebra, have popped up in neighboring states. A new facility opened up in Virginia last year.

Sullivan sat down with The Banner on Thursday to discuss the changing atmosphere and what the future might look like for high school athletics in Montgomery County.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

What are the biggest challenges facing high school athletics today?

Sullivan: I think the biggest challenge holistically is you see the college space changing so dynamically and very quickly with the NIL, the chase for championships and all the things, and a lot of that money drives a lot of that exposure. I’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing, but I think when you look at high schools, a lot of times there’s a trickle-down effect. And so, what does the high school space look like? I think the challenge for us is we have to continue to be focused in on our core why and mission.

We know that between 90% and 95% of our students will not continue on into college. This is their space, and how are we building better people through sports? So the biggest challenge I think is always holding on and protecting the purpose of education-based athletics with all this other noise, other things going on, that are challenging that.

I think the other piece of this, and the one thing I always tell our coaches, is that we and MCPS athletics, we bring the program to our kids. We don’t wait for the kids to come to the program. And what that means is we have students from all backgrounds and all experiences in sports who may not know education-based athletics or the model in high schools. We have people coming from other countries where most countries don’t have the interscholastic model. So we’ve got to think, how do we bring our program to our kids in our school building? And we have to take active steps.

Girls flag football and pickleball were both implemented in all 25 high schools last year. What other sports is MCPS looking to add, and how can the success you’ve had with those two sports be a model for how you move forward?

I think boys volleyball. When we look at, especially in our last student survey, that is a sport that is extremely popular. And we’re seeing that. We have the girls varsity and JV right now, and looking at adding the junior varsity to the boys program, and then also looking at our middle school program. Our middle school students’ number one was volleyball in terms of sport they want to see, and adding that.

So we’re looking to make those adjustments and some enhancements to the middle school program and shaking that program up a little bit to provide more interest and also operationally allow the middle and high school programs to fit together from a coaching standpoint, from the officials’ availability standpoint, all of that. So we’re having some of those conversations.

How has the legalization of NIL impacted things at the high school level?

I wouldn’t say major changes. We do have NIL guidance from the state. We have not seen a lot of NIL opportunities in public schools, not just in MCPS but across the state of Maryland. So I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens in some of the high school spaces with private schools, with other types of schools popping up, sports academies, or whatever they are now. I think we are holding on to what we believe is our why and especially in our public schools of providing a space for everyone and to provide a program where we are engaging a new student and casting a wider net.

Going back to girls flag and pickleball, the number of students that are participating now that weren’t participating, the key number with girls flag in terms of year one for me: 71.4% of the girls participating were new athletes to the fall season. That is a powerful number.

We actually have more participation in the other sports this year than we did last year. So, this whole fear — and there was a fear at one point that girls flag would shut down other sports or draw from other sports — we have not seen that two years in. As a matter of fact, we’ve seen the opposite.

So, I think looking at those things through that lens of ‘how can we engage more students’ ... and that’s been the vision that we’ve had, kind of all grounded and revolving around our core values.

Montgomery County is home to several private schools, and St. James Academy, a sports academy, recently opened in neighboring Virginia. As an athletic director of a public school system, what is your philosophy when it comes to trying to keep up with institutions that have more resources?

We focus in on providing the best possible opportunities for our students that’s within MCPS athletics. I mean, you look at our core purpose, vision, mission on our website. One of the things we say is we want to be the greatest program. And that’s not out of being arrogant or cocky. We want to be the greatest.

That’s not something you achieve, that’s something you chase all the time because there’s always opportunities to improve. We want to be the gold standard in MCPS, and it’s my job to advocate and do everything I can from where I sit and to create the spaces for our coaches and our kids to be successful — regardless of which of our 25 high schools they attend.

We understand that there are private schools, and I did notice the St. James Academy popping up in Virginia. And I saw they’re competing against some of the private schools and some of those dynamics. But we’re going to continue doing what we do for our students. There is a home for anyone in our program.