Christiansburg’s Litton named Athletic Administrator of the Year

Christiansburg athletic director Kirk Litton holds the VIAAA's Group AA Atheltic Administrator of the Year award. Photo by Travis Williams/The Burgs

Winning a state title at Christiansburg High School is becoming a pretty common event.

Its most recent award winner, however, wasn’t one of the student athletes, but the man in charge of coordinating their events.

Christiansburg Athletic Director Kirk Litton was honored March 30 as the Group AA Athletic Administrator of the Year by the Virginia Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association at their annual conference in Norfolk.

The award was a great honor because not only were you being recognized in front of your peers, but also because it is the former presidents of the VIAAA who decide the winner, Litton said.

Litton has spent his entire teaching and coaching career at Christiansburg, starting in 1985 as a football and baseball coach, and later moving over to coach softball.

In 2005, Litton was named the school’s athletic director, a role which he said was always one of his career goals.

“It was always something I wanted to do, from the time I was in high school,” Litton said.

He added that his main motivation for this was to be involved in all sports, opposed to just a handful through the school year.

Being that involved has allowed Litton to witness many of Christiansburg’s athletes and coaches as they experience success.

In the 2011-2012 winter sports season,  the Blue Demons won Division 4 state team titles in boys’ basketball, wrestling and individual titles in both boys’ and girls’ diving.

The success of the two team sports, as well as a pair of fourth-place, state-level finishes thanks to the boys’ and girls’ track teams, has elevated Christiansburg to second place in the running for this year’s Wells Fargo Cup. The Blue Demons trail first-place Grafton (Yorktown) by 10 points in the standing for the award given to the school which performs best across all sports on a state-wide level.

Such state-level success was a goal Litton said he had from the beginning of his tenure as athletic director.

“My goal was for us to become a top-10 program every year for the Well Fargo Cups,” Litton said. “We are looking for consistency…but also doing things the right way in working to achieve that goal.”

Litton credited the school’s most recent success to the unselfish nature of the athletes and coaches and said while they want to win, the group really doesn’t care who gets the credit.

It’s an attitude that likely reflects that of their leader.

Litton said after receiving the award he told his coaches they might have told him the “AD” in the award stands for Athletic Director of the Year, but to him it really stands for Athletic Department of the Year.

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