NMAA announces changes at the top: Sally Marquez to retire, Dusty Young to take over

The thought of retirement had been swirling inside Sally Marquez’s head for years.

On Thursday, she made it official, as the executive director of the state’s governing body for high school athletics announced her departure on Thursday.

Marquez, 62, who has been the face of the New Mexico Activities Association for the last 12 years, will vacate the position at the end of the month.

“I’ve always thought about what is the best way to retire,” Marquez said. “After 41 years (in education), you get to a point when it is time.”

Her right hand throughout the majority of her tenure with the NMAA, Associate Director Dusty Young, will become the new executive director beginning Nov. 1.

The NMAA’s board of directors, at this special emergency meeting Thursday morning, accepted Marquez’s retirement letter and also nominated — and confirmed — Young as her replacement.

“Extremely excited and humbled and honored,” Young, 44, said. “This association means everything to me. I can’t believe I’ve been here 19 years now, and honestly never would have expected to be in this role.”

Marquez was in tears as her letter to the board, announcing her retirement, was read aloud. Even before the meeting began, Marquez had stowed a box of tissues under her seat. It was for her an enormously difficult day.

“That was what was hard,” she said. “I’m not seeking another job. I love the association. I’m not looking to just leave and do something else. I’m in a good place in my life, I’m happy the association is in a great place. It was just time for me to go ahead and move on.”

Marquez spent 20 years with the NMAA, which regulates interscholastic activities, including high school sports, in the state.

She started as an associate director, and was the assistant executive director from July 2011 until she took over as executive director in September 2012, replacing Gary Tripp, and has filled that position the last dozen years.

She also has many years in other capacities as an educator in New Mexico, Texas and Virginia.

Marquez was the sixth executive director in the NMAA’s history, and when she took the job, she was one of only three women who held this position in the country. She once was a multi-sport star athlete at Manzano High School, graduated from the University of New Mexico and earned a masters degree from Virginia Tech.

Young, like Marquez, is a Manzano High graduate, in 1998.

“He’s a fantastic person. He loves New Mexico, he’s been devoted to this association,” Marquez said. “For 19 years, he’s been devoted to the kids of New Mexico. He’s the perfect person to lead the association.”

During her dozen years as executive director, Marquez’s most difficult task was almost certainly leading the NMAA’s member schools through the complicated and controversial COVID-19 pandemic, which had tremendous ripple effects throughout the state’s prep sports universe.

“She brought stability, consistency, understanding. Those are just three of many things she brought to the organization,” said NMAA Board President Anthony Casados, the superintendent at Chama Valley Independent Schools in Tierra Amarilla. “What can I say? She’s the greatest.”

Young has been right on Marquez’s hip through these 12 years. He has largely handled much of the NMAA’s media matters, and he also, among other roles, is the organization’s point man for football.

Casados said there was no need to open up Marquez’s job to a nationwide search, not when the board felt it had the right candidate to succeed Marquez already in the building.

“I think the board has made a great selection,” Casados said. “He has been in the organization for a long time (19 years) and he’s been trained, working with Sally side by side.

“It’s a logical transition. We (could) open it up nationwide, but we know something about Dusty that we don’t know about anybody else.”

Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Gabriella Duran Blakey, who serves on the NMAA board, voted against Young being installed so quickly, but, she said, it was not because of a negative opinion related to Young.

“I voted ‘no’ because I felt like this should go out to the public,” Blakey said. “First, we should ask the membership what they’re looking for in a director, and we should go through a process.”

Young, who worked for both Tripp and Marquez, said he’d take some of his leadership directives from having worked under them, while also looking to create his own identity in the position.

“I will bring a combination of their leadership and, of course you want to make your own imprint as the leader of an organization like this,” Young said. “Time will tell exactly what that’s going to be.”