For school district’s sports boss, it’s all about team

By Ian Whitaker

Sunday, Feb. 1, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Ray Mathis has never made a game-winning basket, crossed the finish line first or pitched a no-hitter. He prefers the sidelines.

The 63-year-old is going on his 36th year working for the Clark County School District, where he has served in a variety of positions, from basketball coach to his current position as the district’s director of athletics.

Born in a small town north of Memphis, Tenn., Mathis rose steadily through the district’s ranks at a time when few coaches were black. Now, he oversees sports for all of CCSD’s schools and sits on the board responsible for regulating high school athletics across the state.

Mathis downplays the role race has played in his life, choosing instead to view hard work as the determining factor for his success. But in rising through the ranks, he and other black community leaders paved the way for greater diversification in Las Vegas and helped the city grow beyond the deep and ugly segregation of its past. It wasn’t until 1960 that the city’s casinos were desegregated through an agreement brokered among civil rights leaders, hotel owners and public officials.

When Mathis arrived in the valley in 1976 as a newly minted airman stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, he knew little about Las Vegas. He lived just outside the base in North Las Vegas and spent three years filing flight plans for F-4 and F-15 fighter jets. Through the years, Southern Nevada grew on him, and he started to fear being deployed elsewhere.

“The thing I liked about it most was that it a growing community,” Mathis said. “If I stayed in the Air Force, I knew eventually I’d have to leave.”

So Mathis retired, joined the Reserves and took a job as an elementary physical education teacher for CCSD.

“I was not a big-time athlete at all,” he said. “I just fell in love with teamwork and having teammates and depending on each other.”

In the afternoons, he coached track and field, basketball and baseball at Rancho High School.

He later took jobs as a P.E. teacher at a middle school and a coach at local high schools. He ultimately was hired at Valley High School and spent 10 years there as an assistant basketball coach.

“When I first came in, there were very few head black varsity coaches,” he said. “But it was tough to get a head coaching job whether you were black or white.”

Mathis decided it would take too long to become a varsity coach, so he focused on “paying his dues” as an assistant working with young athletes who needed the most guidance.

“I really felt that I was giving back to kids who may not have had that discipline at home,” he said. “You were demonstrating a behavior and teaching kids to respect others.”

Mathis moved up the ranks and began a 20-year stint in administration. He worked first in the athletics department at Valley High, then helped the district open Silverado High School and establish an athletics programs there. He also served eight years as president of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association Board of Control, the main governing body for high school sports in the state.

His favorite position, so far, is the one he’s in now: head of athletics for the entire district.

Mathis no longer attends every game and deals more with people his own age than high schoolers, but he feels it’s the best way he can reach students on a daily basis. His job is to find ways to provide equipment and transportation for hundreds of schools with a limited budget.

Technically, he can retire, but he said he still loves it too much to walk away.

“In this position, there are so many ways to help kids, it’s unbelievable,” Mathis said. “Almost every decision can affect kids in a positive way.”