Students at Davidson Fine Arts manage arts, academics and athletics

When one walks into Davidson Fine Arts, you’re immediately greeted with large murals painted onto the walls along with various different accolades in the arts and academics.

Walk a bit further through the main corridor towards the outdoor courtyard, and you may find the school’s flag football team running its practice. The courtyard, adorned with benches and tables and an oddly-placed brick wall no taller than five feet, is the only space where the team has to practice.

Davidson Fine Arts, a 6-12th grade magnet school, puts an emphasis on the arts ― theater, dance, painting, to name a few. Faculty and administration prides themselves on having some of the top academic offerings in Augusta. The school was recently ranked No.4 in Georgia and No. 170 in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.

Sports, for a long time, had been an afterthought. But when current athletic director Adam Kowalczyk joined the school back in 2017, he was tasked with building out an athletic program (essentially from scratch). Eight years and multiple region championships later, Kowalczyk transformed Davidson into a legitimate sports school with high-level athletes.

“You think a fine arts school can’t have that type of a program, but we do,” Kowalczyk said.

The evolution of the Davidson Fine Arts sports program

When Kowalczyk arrived, the only sports Davidson offered were swimming, tennis and golf. When he offered to create a track program for middle school, students immediately showed interest. By 2018, the team was created. That same year, the girls team went on to be runners-up in the county championship.

The success of that team gave Kowalczyk confidence that Davidson had athletic talent, but the school simply didn’t have teams to field its athletes. His next endeavor was hosting intramural volleyball for high school girls. On the first day, over 100 students arrived ready to play.

Kowalczyk ran tryouts for the intramural team, making cuts along the way. Once the team was finalized, he got the team jerseys and signed them up to play in a Co-Ed adult volleyball league at The Salvation Army Kroc Center of Augusta. While they didn’t go onto win the whole thing, the team showed a high level of skill and talent in the games played.

“I thought, really, these girls need a team, that high school experience,” Kowalczyk said.

After filing to have an official team, Davidson was granted its first high school varsity volleyball squad for the fall of 2019. In that first season, the Titans went 13-10 and made it to the playoffs. Following that inaugural year, Davidson’s volleyball team went on to win five straight region championships.

The success didn’t stop there. To help retain talented track and field athletes instead of having them leave Davidson after middle school, Kowalczyk helped start the high school track program in 2021. One of those talented athletes is senior Anna Griffin. She had been running since sixth grade when she arrived at Davidson. In May of 2025, she won the GHSA state championship for the 800-meter and 1600-meter events.

“I think a lot of area teams are surprised at the athleticism of our students,” said Cindy Folger, a dance teacher at Davidson. “They get lulled into thinking oh, they’re from the fine arts school, they’re not athletic, and then they lose to us.”

Transformation can come with growing pains

While Kowalczyk has managed to implement many successful sports teams into Davidson over the years, it didn’t come without its challenges. Arguably the biggest of them all was trying to integrate sports into the fabric of a school that wasn’t built with athletics in mind.

When volleyball was first getting started, Davidson’s team couldn’t play at home because the gym didn’t have the proper holes in the ground to hold the standardized net up. It took over a year to get that added.

For flag football, one of the latest sports to be added at Davidson, not only do they not have a home field, they may never have one. Due to its location in downtown Augusta, there’s no space for a field. Additionally, the team practices in an open courtyard space in the middle of the school building.

“It’s very small, it’s an uneven surface, there’s a big brick wall in the middle,” Kowalczyk said. “We kind of have just made do with what we have, and we’ve always been that way.”

With the majority of Davidson’s budget going to academics and the arts, Kowalczyk had to write several grants to get money for sports. The money paid for equipment, but a lack of staff for teams forced Kowalczyk to wear multiple hats. He coaches both middle school and varsity track and field, volleyball, flag football and golf.

At most schools, kids can pour all of their effort into athletics and put the books on the backburner. But at Davidson, both academics and arts are always the priority. Especially for the varsity teams, players can have upwards of five AP classes on their schedule in a school year. While dance, drama, visual art and other arts are integrated into the school day, it isn’t unusual for students to have to commit time outside of classes for them. If something has to get cut from a student’s day, it’s usually sports.

“We try to allow them to do both [arts and athletics] events,” Folger said. “However, when there’s a hard and fast conflict, they have to choose the arts.”

Kowalczyk has had to structure a lot of what the athletes do around the academic and arts. He’s changed practice times, given more off days to prioritize catching up with studying and allowed students to arrive late or leave early to attend other commitments.

Towards the end of the academic year, the school hosts its annual Davidson Fine Festival where students have performances and showcases for their chosen art. Around that same time are GHSA track sectionals, meaning that students have to miss out on that for the festival.

“I’ve really had to scale back and learn to be much more flexible with the kids,” Kowalczyk said, “because they do have a lot going on, and that’s not even touching on the personal lives that just teenagers have things going on all the time.”

Kowalczyk and the teaching staff do their best to support the athletic teams, but what about the students themselves? With the added pressures of athletics in addition to high-level academics and the arts, how do the students manage it all?

How students manage it all

Griffin and fellow senior Jane Pennington have attended Davidson since sixth grade. Pennington’s art of choice in middle school was dance before switching to piano in high school. Similarly, Griffin was a member of the school’s orchestra. Now, she focuses on painting.

In addition to both students participating in swimming for the school, Pennington is a member of the varsity volleyball team while Griffin is a track and field athlete. To top it off, both students have a GPA above a 4.0 while taking multiple AP courses this year.

One of the biggest proponents to their success has been their support system. Kowalczyk, teachers and even parents lend a hand in helping the students. But having another student who understands what the other is going through has been key for the seniors.

“In sixth grade, when we came home, I’d FaceTime Anna for four hours just to be in her presence, and we’d be doing homework,” said Pennington.

Another key to success has been learning how to manage their time effectively. Pennington calls her planner the “holy grail” because without it, she wouldn’t be able to stay organized. That also includes prioritizing sleep.

Despite developing these strategies, it doesn’t mean things get any easier. During the cross country season, a typical Friday sees Griffin going through a full day of class before having to travel to another town and stay in a hotel for a meet the next day. In addition to homework, she may also have to bring art supplies with her to get done as well.

Free time is a luxury for student-athletes at Davidson. Oftentimes they will have to miss out on social outings that their friends are going to because of a practice or art commitment. But for Griffin, as well as many other Davidson student-athletes, the sacrifice is more than worth it.

“At my old school, I didn’t really feel like I fit in very well,” Griffin said. “But then when I came to Davidson and I was able to run track and do art and [take] challenging academics and stuff, I really found my niche in a way. I found people who had similar interests to me, and it just made me enjoy the process so much more.”

Sentiments like those are why Kowalczyk has fought so hard to integrate more sports into the fabric of Davidson Fine Arts. Athletics have given students the opportunity to express themselves sometimes in ways that the arts wouldn’t allow. And the combination of athletics, academics and the arts help students become well-rounded individuals that are ready for college and beyond.

Davidson doesn’t offer every sport. Basketball and football are noticeably missing. But Kowalczyk believes that the school fits in where they can. And for the sports Davidson does offer, it’s both a reminder of how far the small fine arts school in downtown Augusta has come, as well as how much work is still left to be done.

“I know a lot of people look back and think, ‘Man, I had a good time playing high school sports,’” Kowalczyk said. “I hope that [students] take that with them, looking past some of those long nights and some of those days where they were exhausted but had to go to practice anyways. But then those moments that make it all worth it, I think, is really where our vision is.”

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