Park City High School earns rare national seal for athletics excellence

Park City High School received the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association’s Quality Program Assessment Award at the National Athletic Directors Conference in Tampa, Florida. Photo: Park City School District

PARK CITY, Utah — Park City High School has earned the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association’s Quality Program Assessment Award after completing a yearlong, evidence-based review of its athletics program, school officials said.

The recognition, presented at the 56th annual National Athletic Directors Conference in Tampa, Florida, follows a “rigorous, year-long deep dive” into the athletic department’s operations, policies, and documentation, as described by Park City High technology coach Chris Baer.

“The Quality Programs Assessment is essentially a rigorous, year-long deep dive into the ‘DNA’ of an athletic department,” Baer said. “It points out the documentation you should have in order to be a highly effective department.”

The assessment is organized into 10 categories, ranging from department philosophy and mentoring practices to budgeting, sports medicine, and innovation. Baer said the process required him to gather or build “hundreds of pieces of documentation” with the goal of creating consistent standards across sports.

“Whether a student is playing soccer or football, I wanted to make sure the same high standard of policy was backing them up,” he said.

Baer said the most labor-intensive work focused on safety and risk management, particularly given that Park City High uses multiple facilities across the community.

“We live in an incredible town with great partners like Basin Recreation and the City, which means we get to use a lot of different fields,” Baer said. “But that also means every single one of those fields needs its own specific Emergency Action Plan.”

He credited athletic trainer Chris Antinori with developing emergency action plans over several years and said the QPA process prompted the department to recheck the plans and ensure administrators were confident in their ability to implement them.

“It’s about being proactive rather than reactive,” Baer said.

Baer said the review validated many existing strengths, noting broad student support and a wide variety of opportunities beyond athletics. He said the assessment also pushed the department to formalize practices that had been working informally.

“The QPA pushed me to take those informal successes and turn them into a written procedure,” he said. “Tightening up those formal procedures ensures that the quality of our programs doesn’t just depend on who is in the office that day, but is built into the foundation.”

Since completing the assessment, Baer said the athletics department has continued to focus on improvement, including more intentional communication with coaches — particularly those who are not full-time district employees and can be harder to reach.

“This year, thanks to Mr. Fine and Mr. Sheetz, we are holding meetings with our coaches to have these types of discussions,” Baer said, describing the aim as improving the school experience for all students.

Baer said the recognition is meant to signal that Park City High is operating a high-standard athletics program, even if student-athletes do not notice major day-to-day changes.

“We aren’t just ‘running events’ but are running a high-standard athletics program,” he said. “We created formalities to evaluate our coaches in order to help them grow and be the best mentors for our athletes. We also created plans to handle those rare occasions of disruptions or conflicts.”

He said parents can take the award as reassurance that systems are in place behind the scenes, from academic support to safety planning.

“They can trust that behind the scenes, we have done the work to ensure every detail of their student’s experience has been thought through,” Baer said.

Baer completed the review process while earning his designation as a Certified Master Athletic Administrator, a credential he said helped him identify operational “blind spots” and translate assumptions into written procedures.

“As a young athletic administrator, this process was invaluable for helping me see the ‘blind spots,’” he said. “It pushed me to take the time to really develop those processes so that our department isn’t just running well today, but is set up for long-term success.”

Only 158 high schools nationwide have earned the QPA designation, representing about 0.69% of more than 23,000 high schools in the United States. Park City High School is one of seven schools in Utah to receive the honor.