Athletic director says winning isn't everything


PINE PLAINS — School district athletic director Tom Georgio said winning should not be the main thing students should think about while playing team sports.

"You don’t need to win to be successful," Georgio said. "There are a lot of other goals in life that you need to be focused on besides winning. I just want the kids to have a good time and have fun when they play and also learn life-long lessons that they will carry with them later in life."

Georgio grew up in Farmingdale, Long Island, where he said his main role models were physical education teachers.

"I fell into that mold because I grew up around sports my whole life," he said. "I love sports and I love to teach, so this all made sense to me."

He started in the district in fall 2002 as a junior varsity baseball coach, and he subsequently coached junior varsity football and varsity football. He was named athletic director for the district and head football coach in 2004.

"I think Pine Plains has a very competitive sports program, especially for such a small school," he said. "It seems like the past few years enrollment in sports has dropped off a little from when we first started, but we’re all still very competitive."

He said he plans to continue to build upon existing programs to make them even more competitive.

"In football we’re not where we want to be, but we’re still building that up," he said. "We do have competitive cross-country running, golf, field hockey and volleyball teams and our soccer programs are on the rise. So overall we’re very competitive and we are building up a lot of programs and establishing a good tradition of hard working, hard playing students."

He hopes that all students in the district will give sports a chance.

"I think athletics instills the discipline students need to succeed in the classroom and later in life," he said. "I hope kids will try to be on at least one sports team at least once in their careers. We just want to give them the best opportunity and best experience they could possibly have."

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