The First Few Weeks

ALL I CAN SAY IS AMAZING. The first few weeks on the job at CSU Channel Islands as the Director of Athletics has been truly amazing. I have be greeted with open arms, positive words and lots of support. From the students to faculty to staff to the local community members, there has been the constant welcoming feeling. It seems like everyone wants to see CSUCI succeed and are willing to provide a helping hand.


I had a chance to speak with two different groups of students on campus, and if this is any indications, we can and will have a successful athletic program. I have meet with students representing the Sailing Club, The Lacrosse Club, The Bike Kitchen (Bike Club), etc. In these meetings, there have been students that aren't connected to the various sports clubs but just students. One of the constant themes that I have heard from the students is "We don't care what sport, as long as we have a sporting team to get behind and support. The students have a better understanding of the process that we will go through to develop and create an athletic department, after I had a chance to explain it to them. Some of the students wanted to see us start fielding teams as early as September 2009 (three months from now). I told them I like their drive but that would be just about impossible for us. The reasons are pretty simple: 1) Have to review our budget to see what we can fund constantly over a two to three year period, 2) We need to make sure that we are in compliance with the NCAA policies and procedures, 3) We need to figure out what sports we can offer at this time based off of our lack of athletic facilities, 4)We need have a strategic plan in place that will chart our ramp-up to becoming a fully functioning department of CSUCI, 4) Need to confirm what sports are offered and sponsored within the NCAA and the athletic conference that we will belong to.

I also had a meeting with about 10 faculty members. I will have to say that I was nervous about meeting with the faculty because I just didn't know where most of the faculty members stood on the creation of an athletic department. Most of the faculty that I met with were recommend to me by various different administrator on campus. Overall, each of these faculty members were in support of athletics but did have concerns. One of those concerns were how practice and travel will affect which majors the student-athlete decides to take. This concern is a legitimate one because most of the classes on campus are between 11am and 4pm. As most of us know, practices times are typically anywhere from 12 noon to 6pm, depending on the sport. I mention to them that this would be something that we would have to work on. I did even go as far as to say is if the individual student-athlete had a class in the afternoon and that class was part of their major, that I would work with the coach to maybe have the student miss practice that day. I know this is a break from traditional athletic departments but I feel that we need to be different from most.

In my next posting, I plan to outlining the process that is set down by the NCAA (National Colliegate Athletic Association) on the steps that each school needs to go through in order to become a member of the NCAA at the Division II level.