Additional from Richmond Times-Dispatch
Compare W&M and Furman. And, BTW, note that W&M has about 8800 students and an endowment of about $1 Billion dollars. (... and W&M has existed 328 years. Furman has existed 195 years.)
JOHN O'CONNOR
A William & Mary alum involved in the search for a director of athletics summed up the first order of business for the chosen candidate in two words.
“Re-establish trust.”
“Re-establish direction” also seems appropriate.
W&M is expected soon to announce its new AD, and he or she will lead a department still trying to work its way past a turbulent period that fractured its student-athletes, alumni and fan base.
The interim AD, Jeremy Martin, in a recent farewell letter to the W&M community prioritized uniting around one vision for Tribe athletics and suggested that, because of fiscal constraints, that process will involve difficult choices about how many sports to sponsor.
In the last school year, W&M planned the discontinuation of seven sports for financial reasons, parted ways with the AD who awkwardly pulled the plug on those teams (Samantha Huge), faced the threat of a Title IX lawsuit in response to the cuts, and then restored the sports.
Katherine A Rowe, the school president, recognized “a core conflict. … I hear deep contradictions in what we mean by excellence and competitiveness in a Division I setting.”
The conflict’s basis: How much should W&M emphasize football and men’s and women’s basketball, and how much should W&M be about maintaining a broad-based athletics program, broader than other schools in its NCAA tier?
Sports targeted for elimination were men’s and women’s gymnastics, men’s and women’s swimming, men’s indoor and outdoor track and field, and women’s volleyball. They are part of W&M’s 23-sport offering.
Martin, Rowe’s chief of staff and the interim AD since October, in his letter expressed reservations about whether W&M can sustain that number of sports and still provide its student-athletes quality experiences.
“At this institution, we should expect to excel in any endeavor we undertake. If that is what we expect, we should have the courage to re-evaluate what and how much we can undertake to achieve this goal,” Martin wrote.
In the Colonial Athletic Association, the league to which W&M belongs, James Madison has 18 sports. Richmond (A-10, CAA for football) has 17, and Old Dominion (FBS Conference USA) has 18.
Asked in mid-May by The Times-Dispatch if he believed the Tribe will have 23 sports, more, or fewer, in five years, Martin responded, “I think that’s a great question, because I think all those options are on the table. If you ask me, ‘In five years, does William & Mary athletics look the same?’ I think it will be an improved version, which could mean any number of options, including additional opportunities for sports.”
In his letter, Martin wrote that W&M in athletics competition has “taken pride in overachieving — of doing more with less — and rightfully so to a point. ******** ******** ******** Past that breaking point, trying to ‘do more with less’ devolves into simply less. In other words, ‘excelling less from trying to do too much’ is a risk for W&M athletics.” ******** ******** ********
Martin noted that William & Mary has won more CAA championships than any other member of the CAA since the league started for the 1985-86 academic year. But this year is the first in which no Tribe team won a CAA championship.
“While it would be foolish to overemphasize the results of a pandemic year, it would be equally foolish to ignore the end of a 35-year streak,” wrote Martin, who will return to his position in the president’s office after a new AD is introduced.
Increased philanthropy spurred by planned sports cuts allowed W&M to avoid layoffs and furloughs in the athletic department this school year, according to Martin. That elevated level of giving is required on an annual basis to maintain current staffing and continue all 23 sports, he added.
Martin wrote “some view having fewer financial resources per student-athlete as a measure of efficiency. In reality, ******** ******** ******** having fewer financial resources means telling coaches to recruit talented individuals with less than a full complement of scholarships, play less than a full schedule of games and ultimately to provide a student-athlete experience that is less than we expect ******** ******** ******** of William & Mary.”
Note: Still running strong in the AD hunt, sources say, is ******** ******** ******** Troy Austin, the former Longwood AD now senior associate director of athletics for internal affairs at Duke, his alma mater (Class of 2000). Austin is a former Duke football captain ******** ******** ******** and an alumnus of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center for Sport Leadership, the graduate program that trains leaders in sports management fields.
