EAST PROVIDENCE — With long-time district employee then athletic director Gregg Amore the overwhelming favorite to win his race for Secretary of State at the November 2022 election following his victory in the September Democratic Party Primary, it was only a matter of time before someone would need to be chosen as his successor as the lead administrator for sports in the East Providence school system.

And just as Amore was the obvious choice of voters to become Rhode Island’s 30th ever Secretary of State about a month ago, so, too, was Alex Butler the heir apparent to take over as the next AD.

Those two things did in fact take place in recent weeks. Amore officially submitted his retirement papers (he will be inaugurated as SoS next week) and Butler was selected to be just the seventh person to hold the athletic director position since it became a full-time job some three decades ago.

“I think it’s something I’ve had as a career aspiration for a long time, but I didn’t think it was going to happen this fast,” Butler said last week in his new office on the first floor of the high school building. “I think Gregg kind of going on his way on the political route changed it. I thought, well, if I don’t apply for this now, there’s probably a good chance I was never going to get it with where I am career-wise. So I kind of had to do it and I’m really excited about getting it and doing it.”

Butler, like Amore, is a well-known and respected member of the East Providence community. A city native, he is the son of Clarence “Junior” and Georgette Butler. He is a 1993 East Providence High School graduate, who went onto a decorated basketball career at Rhode Island College where he finished as the second all-time leading scorer in Anchormen history with 2,398 points. Butler had his number retired and entered the RIC Hall of Fame in 2003.

“He’s the best,” Amore said of Butler, with whom he forged a relationship well before they were colleagues in academia. The two met when Amore was a summer playground councilor for the East Providence Recreation Department in the late 1980s and Butler was a young camper. The two recollected they would play home run derby and talk sports for much of the day.

“Alex was always a star,” Amore continued. “And I always assumed he could come after me. He’s a Townie through and through. It all worked out.”

Of Amore, Butler said, “I would just like to say a big thank you to Gregg, who has shown me the ropes. He’s imparted a lot of wisdom and has also just been there if I needed something as I’ve been acclimated with the job. He’s been a big help.”

After graduating college, Butler was eventually hired by then superintendent Dr. Isadore Ramos in 1999 to be a physical education teacher in the district. He spent his first year at the EPHS, then at the elementary school level for two years before spending the next decade-plus at the Riverside and Martin middle schools. He later briefly returned to the high school as a teacher, then shortly thereafter became an EPHS disciplinary dean. He remained in that role for over five years until the move to the AD post became official only a few weeks ago.

Of special note, Butler becomes the first African-American to lead the athletics department, something he said holds considerable meaning to not just him, but to the young men and women he will help guide from his new position.

“I had thought about it and I probably began to think about it more when I moved into the dean’s job because it’s important for kids in our city to see someone who looks like them in positions of power. So I take seriously, which I always have with my job because I want to be a good example for them and also let them know that if this is something they’re interested in, it’s possible,” Butler explained.

He continued, “I think it’s something I’ve always done throughout my career. I want to help every kid in East Providence, but there are kids who like me who need that help, and that’s what I’m here for.”

Besides teaching, Butler has been a coach at EPHS for over 20 years. He began as an assistant for boys’ basketball as well as both boys’ and girls’ volleyball. He would later become the head coach of each program, resigning from the previous two posts in recent years, though remaining in charge of the girls’ spikers. He fully expects to lead the girls’ volleyball team at least more season in the fall of 2023.

“I will definitely be coaching next season,” he said. “I need to see how the job works. I have kids who are getting older and who are getting into their stuff, so I’ll be coaching again next season then we’ll have to see to what happens after that.”

Butler has a reputation of taking a no-nonsense approach to coaching, which he will certainly bring to the AD job along with other attributes and ideas.

“Going through the interview process one of my initiatives was trying to get us back out in the community a little bit more, a little bit more community outreach with our student-athletes getting back into the middle schools, back into the elementary schools, just trying to be representative to what we want our athletes, our students to be,” Butler said.

He explained some other initiatives had been lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, saying, among other things, he would “love” to bring back “High Five Friday” visits by EPHS student-athletes to the elementary schools through the district.

“Those are some of the things I’d like to see and then obviously we want to have success on the field,” Butler added. “And to do that we have to play the right way. We want to be as competitive as we can be. And we want to win. I don’t ever wake up, thinking we’re going to lose. I want to win.”

Everyone wants to win, but Butler inherits a department and a community that isn’t quite the same as it was 10 or 20 years ago never mind the one past generations knew.

Though it is by enrollment, athletically East Providence is no longer a top tier athletic school in every sport. It varies. Butler is aware of that fact and he wants the majority of families to understand it as well.

“We have to be realistic more than anything. Ideally, would we like to have all our programs playing Division I? Yes. But is that the realistic situation? No, it’s not. But it doesn’t mean you can’t work to get to that level,” Butler said. “I just went through it with (girls’) volleyball. We were a Division I program forever. There wasn’t another program that won more than we did, but then we struggled there for a little bit, we dropped down to II and we had a fantastic season.

“What does that do? It creates a lot of positivity in the community. It builds positivity in the kids. It also increases that enthusiasm to want to come to practice and work and helps to grow it. But move up too quick, and you can kill the momentum. The Interscholastic League asked us this year, would you want to go back up? And I said my idea is to (re)build the program. That’s my advice that I would give to the coaches, build your programs where you get them to the point where you can compete at that level year-in and year-out.”

The 47-year-old married (wife, Kate) father of two (daughter, Avery in eighth grade at Riverside Middle School, and son, Alex Jr., “AJ,” a fourth grader at Silver Spring Elementary) still has a long professional career ahead of him. He won’t be eligible to retire anytime soon, so he expects to be the AD for a quite a while.

“(Retirement guidelines) will probably change again before then, but technically I have more than 10 years left…I still have a ways to go. But I’m just trying to think about what’s here today and tomorrow," Butler said. "That other part will take care of itself. I hope to be here for a long time, to be a positive influence on what’s going on here, but I’m also excited to work with different coaches at other levels who I don’t really know that well other than being a coach and part of the staff.

“I don’t envision myself going anywhere as long as I do the job and they’ll have me. I'm going to try to do it to the best of my abilities. East Providence is home. I didn’t come back here and live here for no reason. I have a lot of pride in what we’re doing and I hope to instill that in the kids, which in turn will hopefully inspire them to come back and have a passion for what we do at all levels.”