Athletic Director Renee Baumgartner will be two years into the A.D. job within the month. I recently had a chance to get her perspective and outlook for the future of major sports.
The new P.R. mantra for athletics is "Stampede Ahead," yet the season's results indicate that while there's a lot of action and commotion going on in the Bronco Corral, the Stampede has yet to break out.
In 2016-17, SCU major sports produced some major highs and some major disappointments.
Within the "major" marquee sports - Men's Basketball, Women's Soccer, and Women's Volleyball had strong seasons; all things considered.
In coach Sendek's first season, MBB showed coaching and connecting with players matters. After key injuries broke out, it would have been easy to pack it in. No one did. They were year over year + 6 in wins including over Valpo on the road and a BYU blowout at home gave fans tangible evidence that the program is on the way up.
Women's Soccer just kept on rolling. They sent #1 ranked Stanford packing in the post season on the way to the NCAA Elite 8 where Georgetown ended their run. They also beat the eventual NCAA champion, USC. Final ranking #12.
Women's Volleyball got off to a hot 9-0 start, then was "spiked" by injuries, but still finished with a wining season. Coach Wallace has 13 NCAA appearances in 18 seasons - a proven winner.
Women's Basketball hung tight in the WCC at 9-9 in Coach Carr's first season.
In Men's Soccer, the year just never came together, but the program has been a solid NCAA level team. Their most recent appearance was in 2015.
The major outliers were Men's Baseball and Women's Softball.
Both had another in a string of poor seasons and now both coaching positions are open.
Right up front in our conversation about things that need to get better, Renee said, "we have to change the culture about athletics across the board, both inside and outside the department."
Net, net this means coaches will be given resources and expected to compete for WCC titles and NCAA berths. Witness the coaching changes being made in Baseball and Softball.
This culture change inside the department is palpable. Since starting the Bucking Bronco, I've rarely heard coaches or athletic department staff say specifically "we need to get better" when it comes to a major sport. If they said it, was an "off the record" quote. Not now.
For season ticket holders, fans, students, alums, Trustees and the Administration it's about "buy in."
The Sr. Administration and Trustees are in and have ponied up, but the rest of the above list, to use a poker analogy, wants to "check" before raising to see if SCU is bluffing or has the cards to go national.
When asked about the appetite for continued funding for Athletics among the senior administration, Renee said, "there's been no backing off the commitment to go national."
Now that doesn't necessarily mean there's a pile of cash waiting to be spent. Let's be real.
Budgets are growing. Sources show our Athletics' budget was about $21.6 M in FY 2016. Better. Even more important, we are closing the gap on the athletic scholarship deficit with our peers in the WCC for our other sports like M/W Golf.
My next article will probe DEEP into the numbers so we all can digest the magnitude of the road ahead. Bring your "tums."
For now, in major sports, we're making major investments. In Silicon Valley parlance, seed funding. The $$ are flowing, evidenced by a sizable line item allocation in a recent budget for Athletics master plan funding. The vital signs of a rising Athletics' program that was once on life support is steadily improving.
The bigger challenge remains: how to resuscitate the students, alums, and fan base to, in poker terms stop "checking" and raise their stakes to again believe we can be national. The below article in the student newspaper is telling.
As Renee says, "culture change" is difficult. IMHO, the "Stampede" will happen when we reach the inflection point fueled by sustained major sports' success, in particular Men's Basketball, and students, fans, showing the same pride for Athletics as they do for Academics.
That's when the "horses" will be out of the barn!
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