Yes, of course, there’s the venerable Turkey Bowl, the Thanksgiving Day matchup of the top two teams in the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association. That, however, is part of the problem; the DCIAA includes only high schools in the D.C. public school system.

With more than 40 percent of students attending independent public charter schools, rather than traditional D.C. public schools (DCPS), Ray is faced with reconciling a storied history of D.C. school athletics with a governance structure that is increasingly incompatible with the reality of public schooling in the District of Columbia.

Putting DCPS and charter students on a level playing field, as it were, has been a priority of Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) — himself a schoolboy athlete of some renown — dating back to his term as D.C. Council chairman. Gray quietly made Ray, the former city parks and recreation director and an ex-D.C. Council candidate, the city’s first “statewide” athletic director last month.The “statewide” part of his title is a nod to his place in the administrative superstructure of State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley, who has responsibility for overseeing education in traditional public schools and charter schools. It falls to Ray to bring the two under the same athletic aegis for the first time.

Ray’s first task is to plan a new city football championship open to all public schools. It’s not a simple chore, and if he can accomplish it, the relentlessly upbeat Arkansan will have solved some of the larger obstacles that stand in the way of a more sweeping integration of DCPS and charter athletics.

“How that’s going to look, no one knows yet,” Ray said. “I’m sure everyone has many different opinions. . . . Right now, the key word is flexible.”

Ray might seem an odd choice to accomplish one of Gray’s signature goals. Ray was, after all, a member of predecessor Adrian M. Fenty’s Cabinet before taking on longtime incumbent council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large).

But Ray has kept a low profile after his failed council bid, and he’s kept a reputation for being a get-it-done guy who can manage tricky politics and trickier personalities. And he said his ill-fated run and his new fatherhood have cured him of his political ambitions.

He’ll have to deploy his considerable energy, charm and political savvy in his new assignment. “There’s a little bit of everything involved,” he said. “There’s politics. There’s hurdles. There’s buy-in.”

For one, he’ll have to soothe concerns that integrating charter schools into school athletics programs means discarding decades of DCPS tradition. He’ll also have to address the even trickier issue of creating uniform eligibility standards across all public schools — something that’s been a particularly nettlesome issue in the past.