‘Hometown figure’
New Boys & Girls Club COO looks to future
It was dark and quiet inside the cavernous Boys & Girls Club of the Arkansas River Valley in Russellville, which had been closed for Christmas and through the new year, but that didn’t stop Troy Norton, the club’s new chief operating officer, and handyman/sidekick Jerry Linton from tackling some minor projects — a little paint here, minor maintenance there.
It is not unusual duty for Norton to make such rounds when everyone else has gone home. In fact, during his 16-year career at the club, he has been as likely to be spotted on a riding mower or picking up trash as mentoring youth or running the club’s sports programs, which has, as athletic director, been his official job description for the past 18 months.
“Our motto is, ‘Great futures start here,’ and we believe in that,” he said to sum up the extra effort. “We try to do what’s best for the kids. That’s our No. 1 priority.”
Norton’s notable versatility and commitment are great assets to the club, even more so since November, when he accepted the COO promotion, in addition to his athletic-director duties, pending installation of his replacement. Despite the extra workload, Norton’s enthusiasm for the children and families the club serves through sites in Russellville, Dardanelle and a schoolbased program in London is boundless, and a key rationale for elevating him to chief operating officer.
“Troy has done an excellent job, and he’s a hard worker in the position he’s been in as athletic director,” said Blake Tarpley, president of the organization’s board of directors. “We were looking to add a COO position. We’ve had some growth in the past year in the number of kids we serve. Troy’s entrenched in our community and loves the kids in our community. He was just a natural fit for that position.”
Norton thus inherits an organization that is on the rise with programs and services that are in very high demand. And with the CEO position currently vacant following the departure of Megan Selman, he’s the ranking onsite management figure. The result for Norton is a crash course in organizational leadership.
“We’ve grown a lot; right now, we have over 200 kids just in this facility right here [in Russellville],” Norton said. “It’s like my unit director, Cartha Canada, said: ‘We’re doing something right because they keep coming in and signing up, and they keep coming back.’”
Managing that many kids daily — not to mention roughly another 100 in Dardanelle and London combined — takes coordination and, going forward, more space and amenities. That is what has workers clearing trees and leveling ground behind the Russellville location, installing new flag football fields, and why rooms are being repurposed inside to expand space devoted to meal programs and computer-lab access.
Norton pointed with noticeable pride to these projects, which are merely an overture for his grand vision for the future.
“The big dream as far as here at this club is, we want to grow,” he said. “That’s the main thing we want to do. We want to help more kids out, but to do that, we need to add on to this building. We need more space. I’d like for us to have another gym. Right now, we have 32 total teams in our league, and it’s hard for me to get all the practices in.
“We need to upgrade our Dardanelle facilities as well; we need to remodel that building, do a major overhaul over there. We just bought some more land over there so we can add on to it, too.”
More immediately, Norton is focusing on building and solidifying the club’s 30-employee team, bringing everyone to
one focus. Linton, for instance, spent decades working in various capacities serving youth, including a previous stint with the Boys & Girls Club. Linton said Norton, with his reputation and obvious love for the kids the clubs serve, lured him out of retirement.
“[Troy’s] been working with young people, and when you work with young people, you also deal with parents,” Linton said. “Everybody knows he’s a hometown figure here because he played sports here and teaches school, and he also coaches basketball, and that brings a lot of notoriety,” Linton said. “He’s just an all-around good guy.”
Unlike the hundreds of children and youth the organization serves after school and in the summer, Norton didn’t grow up coming to the Boys & Girls Club. The Russellville native and 1989 graduate of Russellville High School found good role models elsewhere by competing in athletics, which ignited his interest in coaching.
Norton earned his undergraduate degree in health and physical education from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, after which he began his career at Shelter of Sunshine through Counseling Associates, working with abused children. He then earned a master’s degree in education, also from ATU, and continues to teach at his alma mater, in addition to working for the Boys & Girls Club.
While Norton, like the club itself, may be best known for athletic programs, he said there is far more to the organization than just basketball or softball.
“When people come here, they’re usually looking at our sports programs,” he said. “They don’t know that we have people to help kids with homework. They don’t know that we have a computer lab back here [where] the kids can play and work on computers.
“We have a lady who helps with homework here. We have other staff who are in the gyms. We have a lady who’s in the art room. Our chef, Amanda Jones, is about to start cooking classes, which we’re going to incorporate in January. When we show our parents everything that we do here, they’re shocked because they don’t know we offer all of this.”
At this statement, Norton paused. For everything that he still has to learn about grant-writing and facility management, the fundamental skill set that led him to this new opportunity goes to the bone.
“You know how you grow up, and you think, ‘What did God put me on this Earth for?’ Well, I tend to think it was for me to deal with kids,” he said. “Everything I have done has been with kids, as far as helping kids out, coaching kids, mentoring kids, getting them jobs and things like that. We keep kids safe here and out of trouble, and I think that’s what God put me in this world to do.”
When people come here, they’re usually looking at our sports programs. They don’t know that we have people to help kids with homework. They don’t know that we have a computer lab back here [where] the kids can play and work on computers”.
Troy Norton COO OF THE BOYS & GIRLS CLUB OF THE ARKANSAS RIVER VALLEY