Your responsibilities as an AD keep growing, your role keeps expanding, and the support around it remains flat. It like you’re constantly going 100mph and still ending up behind.
If it makes you feel any better, you’re not alone, and you’re not imagining it. A national survey of 680 athletic administrators, published in the Journal of Amateur Sport (Ratts et al., 2025), confirms that the pressure ADs feel is systemic, rather than situational or regional.
In the study, though every issue examined was rated as important, three stood out clearly: AD responsibilities, Providing ADs the Proper Tools to Manage, and Relationship with Administration. Let’s dive in to discover how you can use these findings to protect your effectiveness and longevity in the role.
Use the data to clarify your workload
With AD Responsibilities ranked as the #1 issue for athletic directors, it’s clear that the job description may have reached a level that many consider unsustainable. In fact, interviewees described a role that includes compliance, staffing, discipline, scheduling, legal oversight, parent communication, and community relations.
You can use this research to frame conversations about workload with evidence rather than emotion. Bringing national data into evaluations, goal-setting meetings, or planning discussion redirects the focus from individual capacity to structural expectations. A practical step is documenting everything you manage across a full academic year and comparing it to how the role is formally defined in your district. The difference is often where stress lives.
Even if staffing changes are not immediately possible, clarity alone helps you prioritize and set firmer boundaries around what realistically fits into your day.
Audit your “toolbox” beyond technology
When respondents listed Providing ADs the Proper Tools to Manage as a top issue, they were not only referring to software or systems. Time surfaced repeatedly as the most valuable and most limited resource. The study only served to reinforce that being effective in this role requires enough space to think, plan, and respond instead of constantly reacting.
As an AD, this is a cue to evaluate which tasks require your expertise, and which persist simply because they always have. Identifying patterns gives you something concrete to bring into conversations about delegation, scheduling, or seasonal support.
Professional development also matters more than you may think in your day-to-day life. Many administrators in the study described state and national involvement as the factor that kept them from feeling isolated. If you’ve been putting off training or leadership courses because of workload, this research supports reframing development as a necessity instead of a luxury.
Be intentional about your relationship with administration
Relationships with school leadership ranked as the third most influential factors in how ADs experience their work. The study shows a clear difference between administrators who feel included in leadership decisions and those who feel disconnected from them.
While you can’t control every dynamic, you can be proactive. Regular check-ins where you share how decisions impact student-athletes, staff, and school culture helps others understand the complexity of the role.
Because the study also suggests that misunderstandings often stem from unfamiliarity with what ADs actually do, providing visibility into your work, especially during high-pressure seasons, builds credibility and trust over time.
Seek support before burnout sets in
Mentorship and peer connection did not rank at the very top of the survey, but interviews showed they play a meaningful role in retention. ADs who felt connected to others in similar roles reported greater confidence and resilience.
If formal mentoring is not available in your district or state, informal networks still matter. Reaching out to experienced colleagues, attending association events, or participating in professional groups can provide perspective that is difficult to find locally. The study makes it clear that isolation increases burnout, while connection reduces it.
