Former TUSD basketball star takes on top athletics job in the district | Greg Hansen

The school district hired Jerry Davitch, a former UA football player and head coach at Salpointe Catholic and the University of Idaho, to oversee sports operations at Cholla, Pueblo, Sahuaro, Sabino, Tucson, Catalina, Santa Rita, Palo Verde and Rincon high schools.

The same year, Sahuaro High School senior guard Gary Lewis helped to lead Dick McConnell’s Cougars to the city basketball championship.

Now, 45 years later, Lewis has accepted the job Davitch pioneered, a role that has been passed on with class and efficiency the last four decades to Pima County Sports Hall of Famers Sheila Baize and Herman House.

"I always like a challenge," says Lewis, a former Texas A&M basketball player who most recently has been the AD at Tanque Verde High School. "The opportunity to impact high school athletics on a larger scale appeals to me."

After getting to know Baize (1985-2008) and House (2008-20), I've come to believe that being the AD of TUSD is perhaps the most difficult job in Tucson sports. Any sport. When Lewis begins work on July 1 he will be buck-stops-here chief of facilities, equipment, transportation, officiating, budgeting, scheduling, eligibility and hiring for the nine TUSD high schools sports programs.

This isn't 1981, when Tucson's public schools ruled, with growing enrollment and on-field success that seemed to get better by the year. Open enrollment, private schools and suburban powers like Mica Mountain, Cienega and Catalina Foothills have since changed the high school sports landscape.

"There are few neighborhood components to high school athletics any more," says Lewis. "It has become a grass-is-greener-elsewhere development, for better or worse."

Lewis will replace House, who returned to the job on an interim basis after former UA women's basketball standout Dee-Dee Wheeler left the job after three years. It's not a job for anyone.

Lewis is fully qualified. After completing master's degrees at Grand Canyon University and Concordia College, he started in TUSD as a freshman coach in the late '80s. Lewis has since been the head basketball coach at Catalina Foothills and Tucson high schools, and an administrator at THS and Tanque Verde.

"I've spent more than 30 years in public education and athletics and I look forward to the opportunity to impact high school athletes on a larger scale," says Lewis. "I want to help the athletes and their parents have a more enjoyable journey. I want to create more civility. This is much more than wins and losses."

Lewis won't be a one-man crew. Each TUSD high school has its own athletic director and other support staff. But it is Lewis who must deal with the athletic decline of the last decade or so at schools such as Catalina, Palo Verde and Santa Rita and work with the state-wide administrative giant in Phoenix, the Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA), to keep TUSD schools in competitive situations.

At 62, Lewis could have retired. Instead, he'll take on the job of a lifetime. "I just can't sit still," he says. "I've got to have a project."