Gordon Will Be CIF Commissioner : Prep sports: Northern California educator selected to head nation’s largest high school athletic governing body.

Dave Gordon, an education administrator with a limited athletic background, has been hired as the new executive director of the California Interscholastic Federation, The Times has learned.

Gordon, 48, will be introduced at a news conference next Saturday in conjunction with the state track and field finals at Cerritos College.

“Many of my positions over the years have included athletics as part of my administrative responsibilities, so this won’t be a totally new experience for me,” said Gordon, assistant superintendent of elementary education for the Elk Grove Unified School District near Sacramento since 1991. “I was looking to broaden my leadership duties, and I think this position fills the role.”

Gordon will be the first executive director named without having served as a CIF administrator, though he was on the CIF Council from 1989 to ’91 as the state Department of Education’s liaison. He worked for the education department from 1983 to ‘91, as associate superintendent and deputy superintendent.

The hiring ends a four-month national search that began shortly after Commissioner Tom Byrnes announced his intention to resign in December. Byrnes, head of the CIF since 1980, is under contract through July but had his last day in the office Friday.

Gordon was one of four finalists: Margaret Davis, CIF associate commissioner since 1983; Nancy Lazenby Blaser, commissioner of the CIF Central Coast Section, and Rick Price, principal of Paradise High near Chico. Gordon had been the front-runner for the past month, but contract negotiations and the future site of the CIF office delayed the decision.

The CIF office is located in La Mirada, but Gordon’s hiring may mean a move to Sacramento for the 1996-97 school year.

“I think the idea is to finish out the lease in La Mirada while studying the feasibility of moving the office up north,” said a CIF source.

The CIF is the nation’s largest high school athletic governing body with 1,176 member schools. It is a nonprofit organization that relies on membership dues, ticket revenue and corporate sponsorship.

Although the CIF is on solid financial ground, Gordon will have his hands full keeping peace in an organization beset with political strife.

One of his immediate duties will be to help restructure the CIF, which consists of 10 sections that vary greatly in size. A committee has been studying plans to have eight sections that are similar in size.