Woodland Hills athletic director Ron Coursey leaving WPIAL for Chambersburg job

By: Chris Harlan
Thursday, June 3, 2021 | 7:29 PM

Woodland Hills athletic director Ron Coursey has always wanted to chat with the PIAA leadership about its transfer rule. He’ll soon be working almost in their backyard, once he becomes athletic director at Chambersburg, so maybe he’ll knock on their door.

“I would love to have that conversation, if they’ll entertain it,” he said.

Coursey has been Woodland Hills’ athletic director since July 2017, but the Maryland native is leaving Western Pennsylvania next month for a job closer to home.

At Chambersburg, he takes over a school that’s one of the largest in the state and is located an hour from his parents and about 40 miles from PIAA headquarters. With more than 9,000 students in the district overall, Chambersburg is larger than any district in the WPIAL.

Woodland Hills posted its athletic director job opening Tuesday.

“Woodland Hills will always have a special place in my heart,” Coursey said. “I love it here. I love our kids. I love our community. I love the tradition and the history of this place, so I’ll always look fondly upon it.”

As a Black school administrator and the only racial minority on the WPIAL board of directors, Coursey has served as an advocate. He won re-election this spring for another one-year term on the WPIAL board, so his resignation will leave an open seat until the board appoints his replacement.

He’s switching PIAA districts, but says his advocacy for minority communities will continue.

“The first conversation I’d like to have with District 3 and the PIAA, if they’ll hear me, is to look at this transfer rule,” Coursey said. “No matter how you slice it, in my humble opinion, it is disproportionately affecting low-income families and families of color. Because we typically come from transient communities, transient populations, and it is hurting us severely.”

During his time at Woodland Hills, he put together a multi-game showcase in Week Zero of the WPIAL football season and organized the “Stop the Violence Shootout” basketball event around Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“Gun violence is still a major, major issue in our communities,” Coursey said. “To be able to give back to the community with the game of basketball, a sport I love, was really cool. You don’t have enough ink to write everything we accomplished here and all of the cool things that I’m so proud of.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

Tags: Woodland Hills