Jim Haskins is a graduate of Grand Rapids South High School, where he participated in football, basketball and tennis. Following high school, he attended Grand Rapids Community College, where he was a member of the basketball team.

 

Jim began his career in education at Grand Rapids Creston High School, where he was a teacher and coach for 17 years. In 1983, he accepted the assistant principal position at Rockford High School and was named principal in 1984, where he served for 16 years. While at Rockford, Jim was instrumental in the development and opening of the new school building in 1992 and led Rockford to be recognized as one of the top technological schools in the state. After retiring from Rockford, he worked as a technology project manager for the Greiner Architectural Firm before being named in 2005 as the first commissioner for the OK Conference, where he spent 14 years.

 

Steve Scholten, retired assistant OK Conference commissioner and Allendale High School principal, wrote, “Jim came at the perfect time to the OK Conference. Where previously a school’s principal served as the annual leader, Jim became the first commissioner and took the largest conference in the country to new heights. Jim is extremely detail-oriented, but also sees the global picture. He started a superintendents’ advisory committee and attended Tuesday, Thursday and Friday sporting events to personally interact with officials. School sports in west Michigan are better for having Jim Haskins as the leader of their largest conference.”

 

During his time with the OK Conference, Jim helped to reorganize the initial 51-school league, merge the Grand Rapids City League into the conference, rewrite the conference handbook, establish the Champions of Character program and co-author a Title IX handbook for the conference that was later used by many schools across the nation. He has served as a speaker at the MIAAA annual conference, as a West Michigan sports commission trustee, a Grand Rapids sports hall of fame trustee, was an MASSP regional representative and is president of the Breton Village Neighborhood Association.

 

Jim is a member of the Rockford Sports Hall of Fame, the Rockford High School Academic Hall of Fame, the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame and was the 2018 recipient of the Warren Reynolds Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grand Rapids Sports Hall of Fame.

 

Jim continues to be a fixture at Rockford High School home games and other activities in Rockford where his grandchildren are involved.