OCIAA coordinator Chris Mayo to retire after nearly 30 years

Orange County school sports are about to lose one of the administrators who kept the calendar moving behind the scenes. Chris Mayo is retiring after nearly 30 years in athletics, including about a decade as the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association’s coordinator, the person who helped keep modified, freshman, junior varsity and varsity sports aligned across the county.

Mayo’s route into the job was not a straight line. He had worked for the Orange County Department of Health and Stony Ford Golf Course before entering athletic administration, and he has said he did not initially know exactly what the work would involve. Once inside the system, he became one of the people responsible for the daily machinery of school sports: scheduling games, certifying coaches and assigning officials, the kind of work that only becomes visible when it fails.

His retirement also closes a chapter in Section IX athletics that stretched well beyond Orange County’s borders. Mayo helped launch the OCIAA’s first website, later added social media pages, and was part of the expansion of unified sports, girls’ wrestling, boys’ and girls’ lacrosse and flag football. Those additions changed what students across the county could play, while the less visible scheduling work determined whether those games actually happened on time.

The transition is already taking shape. Dan Morse is listed alongside Mayo in the Section IX member directory as an interscholastic athletic coordinator, and Section IX meeting minutes from Sept. 4, 2025 show Mayo introducing new OCIAA athletic directors to the Athletic Council. That matters because the OCIAA is fully affiliated with Section IX of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association, and continuity in that relationship helps districts avoid disruptions in eligibility, scheduling and postseason planning.

The scale of the operation makes the handoff significant. Port Jervis schools describe OCIAA-linked athletics as covering more than 40 team sports and relying on the OCIAA SportsPak schedule for cancellations and updates. Section IX records also show the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association, Inc. was first filed on Jan. 6, 1988, meaning Mayo spent most of the organization’s formal life inside its modern era. The current OCIAA meeting calendar runs through June 2026, underscoring that the office remains active as Morse prepares to take over the job Mayo helped define.