South Atlantic Conference Commissioner Doug Echols knows as well as anyone that sports are important in community life.

In addition to administering a Division II athletics conference, Echols has been elected three times to serve as mayor of Rock Hill, South Carolina, a rapidly growing city near Charlotte, North Carolina.

It’s no surprise, then, that Echols’ conference is an active participant in Division II’s community-engagement initiative, or that his city enjoys a warm town-gown relationship with NCAA member institution Winthrop University.

The city of Rock Hill seemingly has much in common with Division II, which recently has capitalized on its member institutions’ natural community ties to help distinguish its brand of intercollegiate athletics competition from NCAA Divisions I and III.

“We’re working really hard, even though we’re in the Charlotte metro area, to maintain our own identity and have our own economic-development base and those kinds of things,” Echols says of Rock Hill, which has doubled in population to approximately 60,000 residents during his civic service.

“We’re not a bedroom community,” he says. “We very much have our own identity.”

As a conference commissioner, Echols appreciates the opportunities that community involvement offer for universities and colleges.

“Some of our schools are located in small communities and some are associated with rather large metro areas,” he said. “Every one of those institutions in our league, and I believe throughout Division II, has a great opportunity, because each is a place of such vitality.

“A university is just overflowing with energy and excitement, and not only in athletics. But athletics has the opportunity to be the front door, or as some people have said the front porch, of what’s happening at the university.”

Rock Hill has made its own front porch available for the benefit of intercollegiate athletics, serving as host for the 2001 Division II Women’s Golf Championships.

“We had support from our visitors and convention bureau and our chamber of commerce; we had assistance from Winthrop University, even though this was a Division II event; and we had the local medical community involved,” said Echols, who will retire as SAC commmissioner after this season. “All these people were engaged in this event and really helped support it, and that’s what really makes for a nice event. We hope the student-athletes and coaches and teams felt like they received some Southern hospitality.”

Ironically, as important as sports are to Rock Hill’s mayor both personally and professionally, in at least one respect they temporarily derailed Echols’ political career.

“I was a proponent for building a 75-acre softball complex and park on a major thoroughfare here in Rock Hill – and I got beat (in a 1984 bid for re-election to a position on the city council) because of that!”

But all is well that ends well: The city built the complex, Echols successfully stood again for election a few years later, and he’s now is in his 10th year as mayor.

“Most of the time, I identify myself as commissioner of the South Atlantic Conference,” he says.

“And I’m very proud of it.”

Doug Echols Bio

Doug Echols’ professional roots are in education and athletics, first as a teacher and high school coach and then as an associate athletics director at Winthrop University. But through it all, he’s also maintained a taste for politics. When the city of Rock Hill redrew its city council districts in 1980 and left Echols’ neighborhood without an incumbent representative, he decided to run for election. “All my life, I’ve had an interest in politics and in leadership roles in public service,” he says. “It’s just been an evolving thing for me.”

Even after losing a Council election in 1984, he remained interested, though he now also appreciates the opportunity the political detour offered for spending more time with his two children.

“It (losing the election) probably was a blessing as I look back on it, because my children were young. You get involved in all kinds of things that families do with their children, plus I had a busy career. So, I stayed out for 10 years.”

During that time, he moved from Winthrop into the position of commissioner of the South Atlantic Conference, an eight-school league with members in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. (A ninth school recently joined the league and a 10th school is scheduled to join in 2008-09.)

He eventually took another run at civic office, reclaiming his seat on the city council in 1994. Soon after that, the city’s longtime mayor decided not to seek reelection. Echols won the race to succeed him, and 10 years later, he’s in the midst of a third four-year term.

As a conference commissioner, Echols has been active in NCAA affairs (he is a former member of the Division II Management Council), and his involvement in both intercollegiate athletics and city government has given him an up-close look at two distinctly different ways of getting things done.

He says the dual roles have helped him in both his professional and political pursuits. “I think probably some of my NCAA work has helped me serve better in the public arena, and some of my work in the public arena has helped me serve the NCAA.” How do the politics of intercollegiate sports differ from city government?

“One of the great things about the way the NCAA works is that it really does take a grassroots approach to forming some resolution or position of a major issue over time,” he says.

But the down side, he concedes, is that it takes longer for the NCAA to make decisions.

Still, Echols thinks the NCAA’s way of doing things is appropriate for the organization – especially considering its ties to higher education. Even if it can’t move quite as quickly as a much smaller city council, the NCAA takes care to involve all of its various constituencies – from presidents to coaches to faculty – in decision-making.

“Large can be cumbersome, but I don’t think – even though obviously we don’t agree 100 percent on anything in the NCAA – I’ve ever heard criticism where people say, ‘I didn’t have a chance for any input.’

“I think that’s a big plus,” he said.