Early in her career with TUSD, Sheila Baize helped lead a gender-equity campaign that switched the girls basketball and softball seasons.

Aaron J. Latham / arizona daily star 2003

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While looking through Sheila Baize's laundry list of career accomplishments Wednesday, I stumbled on what had to be a glaring error.

"This can't be right," I told her. "It says you were inducted into a Cross Country Coaches Hall of Fame in 1995."

"That's right," said Baize, director in interscholastics at TUSD.

"Have you ever coached a cross country meet in your life?" I asked.

"No."

"But you're in the hall of fame?"

"Yes."

And so it goes for Baize, the woman who has kept TUSD's athletic program afloat since July 1985 with unparalleled commitment and underappreciated expertise. Awards have a way of falling in her lap when she least expects it.

On Wednesday at 6 a.m., a friend called to say she read in the Star that Baize was named the Southwest District Athletic Director of the Year on Monday and is one of six finalists for the national award.

"I said, 'What are you talking about?' I had no idea," Baize said.

Baize's career in athletics has touched every nook and cranny, and she has been successful in every venture. Her résumé is filled with words like "pioneer" and "trailblazer" and she's in more halls of fame than the Beatles.

Before joining TUSD, she was a five-time state champion softball coach and a state finalist girls basketball coach at San Manuel in the 1970s and '80s.

In her first year running the show at TUSD, Baize helped lead a gender-equity campaign that sought to move girls basketball from spring to winter, and softball from winter to spring — their traditional seasons.

To a younger generation, those seasonal changes seem nothing more than an exercise in common sense. But in 1986, the shifts were deemed radical by many, and Baize became public enemy No. 1.

"I literally had people threaten me because we felt so strongly that the change was necessary and fair," Baize, 58, says now. "There was even a coach who was quoted in the paper as saying I had ruined his life.

"It's so true of younger people today — they've never known anything different than girls being treated the same as boys. We've come a really long way since those days."

It was a valuable lesson for Baize early in her tenure at TUSD: If she wanted to make a difference, she needed to learn to dodge bullets. And she did.

In her office at Catalina High School, Baize and her staff of three oversee nine area high schools and 19 middle schools. They coordinate budgets and game scheduling for all schools and all teams in all sports, as well as supervising bands, orchestras and other fine-arts programs.

When someone has a complaint — "No one ever calls when they are happy," Baize said with a laugh — they call Baize's office.

"You know you are getting your money's worth with Sheila working the job," said Howard Breinig, a former state champion football coach at Sahuaro who was on the selection committee when Baize was hired in 1985.

"If she thinks something needs to be done, she gets it done. She has done the best job of any athletic director I've ever been around."

Baize is to Southern Arizona high school athletics as Lute Olson is to Arizona basketball. Take her out of the equation, and widespread panic sets in.

That much was evident in April 2003, when then-TUSD superintendent Stan Paz cut Baize's job in an effort to reduce costs amid a $29 million budget deficit.

Three months later, when Paz realized how invaluable Baize and her staff are, he found ways to bring them back on board.

Local coaches and athletic directors made the point quickly and clearly: Budget crisis be damned, Sheila Baize better not lose her job.

"I don't think anyone has the idea of the magnitude of her job and what it entails," longtime TUSD coach and athletic director Bob Vielledent said at the time. "They ought to job-shadow her for a while. If people followed her around, their hair would start to hurt."

This latest award, given by the National Association for Sports and Physical Education, is long overdue. It is fair to say no one has done more to improve and keep intact high school athletics in Southern Arizona than Baize.

But she directs conversation from her merits to the work being done at local schools with the aid of bond programs. New practice gyms and concessions and restroom facilities are being built at four TUSD schools — Cholla, Sabino, Sahuaro and Santa Rita. These improvements will be part of her legacy whenever she retires.

Until then, she will always have to dodge bullets, from complaints to budget woes. No worries. She maintains that no one in the district has it as good as she does.

"The thing I love about student activities is that they are the life and breath of any high school," she said, "and I get to witness it up close. I have the best job in the district."

Sabino infielder Jason Hanson this week was listed as one of the 100 best high school baseball players in America by Takkle.com, an affiliate of Sports Illustrated.

Hanson, who has signed with Big 12 powerhouse Oklahoma State, is ranked 84th in the country. The Web site's analysts praised his natural talents and said his "speed, arm strength and bat speed stand out and give him excellent potential to flourish."

It's safe to say Sabino hasn't had an infielder of Hanson's abilities since Milwaukee Brewers all-star shortstop J.J. Hardy was there in 2001.

Canyon del Oro track and field alums are improving by leaps and bounds around the country.

UA teammates Jordan Powell (second place in the long jump) and freshman Jimmy Coffin (seventh, pole vault) stood out during last weekend's Willie Williams Classic at the UA.

Tulsa sophomore pole vaulter Caitlin Clancy — Tulsa's record-holder in the event — placed second at the Tulsa Duels. And sister Molly, a freshman at Cal Lutheran, already has two second-place performances in the same event this outdoor season.

The Catalina Foothills baseball team began the season ranked 10th in the country by StudentSportsBaseball.com.

National high school rankings are often random guesses by people cooped up in an office somewhere, but in talking to some local coaches last month, they all said Foothills' talent warrants national praise.

That is still true on an individual level, but the Falcons have surprisingly struggled all year, and it has many people wondering what is wrong.

They are 7-6 while playing a difficult schedule thus far. At the start of the season, I would have called you crazy if you said Foothills — with more than a half-dozen future college players — would lose six games all year.

The good news is the 4A Sonoran Region season begins next week, so the most important games lie ahead. The Falcons have more talent than any team in the area, and it isn't even close. They are more than capable of winning the 4A-I state championship in May.

But as of today, Tucson's best team is nowhere near the state playoff picture. The desperate push for wins begins now.