Doug Ute, a former coach, teacher, athletic administrator, principal and superintendent who spent 35 years in Ohio’s schools, was named the Executive Director of the Ohio High School Athletic Association on September 8, 2020. He is the OHSAA’s 11th leader in its 117-year history.
Highlights of Ute’s tenure at the Association include added participation opportunities for student-athletes, streamlined technology solutions for school administrators and officials, enhanced mental health training for coaches, increased financial support for schools and an emphasis on sportsmanship across the high school athletics landscape.
Ute led the OHSAA’s adoption of girls wrestling and boys volleyball as sanctioned sports beginning with the 2022-23 school year and the Association’s support for a pair of non-sanctioned partner sports in spirit and esports. In addressing the statewide shortage of sports officials, Ute has developed an OHSAA partnership with RefReps to move the classroom curriculum for new officials to a more convenient online platform. In a partnership with The Ohio State University’s LiFEsports/Coach Beyond program, Ute has emphasized training Ohio’s interscholastic coaches on the importance of being able to address their athletes’ mental health concerns. Technology updates include electronic ticketing for OHSAA tournament events and new tools for member school administrators that connect them with contest assigners and officials and in a single platform. In addition, sportsmanship among fans, competing teams and toward officials continues to be one of Ute’s priorities, with an expanded OHSAA-sponsored sportsmanship initiative set to be unveiled during the 2023-24 school year.
Financial policies put in place under Ute have seen the Association establish an appropriate rainy day fund for non-profit organizations while also distributing over $1 million to high schools through a new Athletic Enrichment Fund, paying over $1 million in travel stipends to schools participating in regional and state team tournaments and distributing nearly $175,000 in scholarships to outstanding senior scholar-athletes.
Along with his duties as executive director, Ute serves as the OHSAA’s sport administrator for girls and boys basketball, directly overseeing the coordination of the regional and state tournaments in those sports.
Ute joined the OHSAA near the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and guided the organization through the ever-changing pandemic environment. Under his leadership, the OHSAA was able to navigate financial, attendance and facility availability restrictions in order to complete all of its state tournament events during the 2020-21 school year.
Ute was a school superintendent for 20 years—nine years at Marion Elgin Local Schools and 11 years at Newark City Schools—prior to assuming his post at the OHSAA. He also coached and taught at Noble Local Schools in eastern Ohio and Buckeye Central High School, which is near his hometown of Bellville in north central Ohio.
At Newark, a district of 6,500 students, Ute helped create the Social, Emotional and Academic Success (SEAS) program that includes counselors, teachers and staff to discuss ways to help students succeed in life. He expanded the free lunch program, made free breakfast available to all students, and put a strong emphasis on student and family social and emotional health. The school district responded with its highest-ever graduation rate and a renewed sense of pride in the city and school district. In 2019, the Youth Leadership Council of Licking County presented him the Ruth Satterfield Award for Prevention Excellence, given to an individual who actively supports youth development and advances youth prevention.
Ute began his career in 1988 as a basketball coach and part-time business teacher at Noble Local Schools (Shenandoah High School) in Sarahsville in eastern Ohio. He then went to Buckeye Central in New Washington as a teacher and coach, while also serving as the athletic administrator. In 1996 he became the principal at Marion Elgin and then took over as superintendent in 2000 at Elgin, a district of 1,500 students. Ute became superintendent in Newark in 2009.
In early 2020, Ute was tabbed as Deputy Director of the Buckeye Association of School Administrators (BASA) before assuming the OHSAA’s Executive Director role later that year.
An active member of BASA for over 20 years, Ute served as that association’s president during the 2019-20 school year. He served on the OHSAA’s Central District Athletic Board in 2008-09 and was the Central District’s secretary from the 2011-12 school year until taking the lead role at the OHSAA in 2020.
Ute was a standout student-athlete at Clear Fork High School, graduating in 1980, and played basketball at Ashland University, where he led the team in assists all four years and left as the school’s career assists leader (he currently ranks second with 687, an average of 6.36 per game). He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing and would later return to Ashland to earn a master’s degree in school administration, a graduate teaching degree in business, a principal’s license and a superintendent’s license.
Ute and his wife, Kory, a retired school nurse from Marion Elgin High School and currently the head girls volleyball coach at Marion Pleasant High School, have four children and eight grandchildren.