Bucknell University Athletics
From the AD's Desk
8/21/2009 8:00:00 AM | General
Aug. 21, 2009
Greetings Bison Fans!
The calendar claims that there is another five weeks of summer remaining, but for those of us who make a living in college athletics, “summer” officially came to an end last week with the arrival of our fall student-athletes back to campus.
While summertime may seem less hectic without most of our students on campus, there is still plenty to be done. For our coaches, summer is a key recruiting time. Whether it's working the summer camp or travel team circuits around the country, the coaches have been hard at work trying to identify the next Bison scholar-athletes.
For our administrative team, summer is a time spent working on long-range planning, facility upgrades and fundraising. The last of those items is of particular importance in today's economic climate, as you well know if you have read previous editions of From the AD's Desk.
I am pleased to say it has been a productive summer on the fundraising front, highlighted by the recent announcement of a major gift by Dan and Chris Richards to the Bucknell men's and women's water polo programs in honor of Coach Dick Russell. As part of their commitment, Dan and Chris have also issued a challenge to other friends and alumni to step up their support of the Bison aquatics programs.
While annual giving to the Bison Club is the lifeblood of Bison Athletics, we do count on major gifts for large-ticket items such as facility projects and endowments. A contribution such as the Richards' will impact Bucknellians for generations to come.
At Bucknell, we have always made it a priority to be as efficient with our resources as possible, even in a flourishing economy. But now we are living every day by that “do more with less” philosophy, even though our staff is being held to the same lofty standards as ever before. Recently, the department of athletics and recreation was assigned a significant budget reduction for the 2009-10 fiscal year. Our operating budget provided by the university was trimmed by a bit more than $300,000, and another $300,000 was reduced in salaries and benefits by not refilling some vacated staff positions. The hard-working professionals on our staff are now dealing with the affects of these fiscal and personnel reductions every day moving forward.
And here is the real challenge: the most straightforward path to a resolution of that budget reduction is through an increase in our Bison Club giving. But the very same economic woes that have necessitated these cutbacks are also impacting you, our loyal supporters. As such, our Bison Club coffers are also understandably down in comparison to previous years. In addition to the $600,000 reduction in operating and human resources budgets, we must also manage a six-figure drop in spendable dollars out of our Bison Club accounts. That all amounts to a total budget decrease of about three-quarters of a million dollars … just for 2009-10!
That is why it has never been more important to lend your support to Bison Athletics.
If you would like to consider making a donation to the Bison Club, or you know someone who does, please contact Todd Newcomb at 570-577-1771, Tom Harvey at 570-577-3459 or Terry Conrad at 570-577-3200. As always, you can make your donation online, and you can specify which program you would like to support. THANK YOU!!
I would be remiss if I didn't thank all of those alumni and friends who returned to campus for another successful Bud Ranck-Tom Gadd Memorial Kickoff Classic event last month. Some of the golf was better than others, but all of the stories were great!
From a facilities standpoint, the biggest summer project was the resurfacing of our varsity tennis courts. The U.S. Open-style, blue and green color scheme looks very sharp. We are also very close to wrapping up a refurbished video technology suite in Sojka Pavilion. This project, made possible by the late Bob Beck and his family, houses our advanced video editing equipment, is the control center for the Sojka Pavilion video board and serves as the operations center for our live Bison Vision broadcasts of Sojka events.
Of course, we are still focused on a number of other projects, such as Phase IV of the West Fields improvement plan – the construction of new baseball and softball facilities – an instructional golf center at the Bucknell Golf Club and the Christy Mathewson-Memorial Stadium renovation and improvement plan.
Also this summer, we partnered with Replay Photos to launch a new online photo store, and Bison athletics now has its very own Twitter page at twitter.com/BisonSports.
As we move into the 2009-10 academic year, our staff will have its sights on a number of projects. Among them is the “Bison Orange & Blue Goes Green” initiative, a program that intends to address sustainability and environmental practices related to Bison Athletics.
One benefit from the harsh reality of the budget reductions with which we have been challenged is that it has forced us to evaluate certain inefficient, “non-green” practices. For example, with the proliferation of online resources, we plan to do much less printing in the future. In addition to being very expensive, we also found that we were discarding quite a bit of printed materials at the end of each year. As such, most of our media/recruiting guides will now come in online formats only. Other printed materials, such as gameday programs and departmental brochures, are being reviewed and may also be subject to format change, reduction or elimination.
You may remember that last January, we partnered with Coca-Cola and the Bucknell Student-Athlete Advisory Committee in a recycling campaign, and we held a “Go Green Day” at a women's basketball game. Our annual August organizational staff meeting, which has traditionally been laden with handouts, will be paper-free this year, with all materials posted to an internal computer server space. Watch for more environmental-awareness events throughout the year.
Of course, even through all of the summer activity, we have all been thinking about the start of the fall season. And with good reason, as optimism is high surrounding every one of our fall programs.
Football was the first to report back to campus, and with more than a full week of preseason practice already in the books, coach Tim Landis has provided very positive reports. The team appears to have a very strong veteran presence with solid leadership. More than 50 players spent the summer working out on campus, and we are all confident that if we can avoid the injury bug the pieces are in place to improve upon last year's 5-6 record.
We are hoping to see a huge crowd for the Sept. 12 home opener against Robert Morris. Don't forget about the Damon's tee-shirt promotion at that game, which starts at 6 p.m.
Both soccer teams are in position to challenge for Patriot League titles this season. Brendan Nash's men's team has both returning talent – reigning PL Offensive Player of the Year Conor O'Brien was just named to the Hermann Award Watch List – and a very promising recruiting class that was ranked No. 30 in the nation. Ben Landis' women's squad has posted double-digit victory totals in each of the last four years and has nine of 11 starters coming back from last year's team that finished runner-up in the Patriot League standings.
The Bison men's and women's soccer teams both host Penn State this year at our wonderful new Holmes Stadium facility, and we are very excited that the Fox Soccer Channel will be back on campus to televise the Oct. 30 men's home game against Lafayette.
Jeremy Cook is back for his second year in charge of the Bison field hockey program. In Jeremy's first year at Bucknell he led his team to the championship game of the Patriot League Tournament. With many key parts back, the team is working hard to catch American for the title in '09.
Cindy Opalski called this year's recruiting class her “tallest ever.” And for a coach who is entering her 20th season at Bucknell, that is saying something. On early glance, the Bison appear to be bigger and deeper this season as they aim toward challenging defending champion American for the Patriot League championship.
Kevin Donner's cross country programs should once again be in the hunt for a championship this fall. Backed by one of the top freshman classes in many years, the Bison women finished second to Navy last season. Those rookies, including PL individual runner-up Stephanie Fulmer, are all back with a full year of experience. The men took fifth at last year's conference championship, but they return all but two scorers from last year's meet and expect continued improvement this season.
Bucknell's men's water polo squad has to replace only three graduating seniors, but two of them were all-conference performers. Coach John Abdou does welcome back All-American Richie Hyden, however, as the Bison look to improve on last year's fifth-place Eastern finish.
I will delve into more detail about the winter sports in the next edition of “From the AD's Desk,” but I did want to include an early mention of a very exciting wrestling dual meet coming up on Friday, Nov. 27. The Bison will be hosting the No. 1 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes, the most successful program in college wresting history. We are going to hold that competition in Sojka Pavilion and are looking to break a Bucknell wrestling attendance record that night. The re-emergence of Bison Wrestling in such a short period of time has been amazing to watch, and this will be another significant night for coach Dan Wirnsberger and the program.
I also hope that you will begin planning for the 2009-10 basketball season. The men's schedule has been released, and season tickets are now on sale. The home opener will be Saturday Nov. 21 against Saint Francis. This should be a great year for alumni to follow the Bison on the road, with away games slated for New York City, Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.
Today the remainder of the first-year class arrived for Orientation, soon the start of fall-semester classes will be upon us, and then another year will be underway. As we head into the new year, I have reminded each of our coaches and staff members that while we are faced with many significant challenges, particularly in the areas of budget and recruiting, we still are committed to the same high expectations. We have championship aspirations in all 27 sports, and if last year's standings are any indication, the race for the 2010 Presidents' Cup will be a heated one.
I would like to wish every Bison student-athlete and coach the best of luck for a safe and successful 2009-10 season, and I hope to have the opportunity to see each of our loyal Bison supporters at a Bucknell athletics event this season. Best regards, and as always … GO BISON!
John P. Hardt
Director of Athletics & Recreation
Previous installments of "From the AD's Desk"
-- August 15, 2005
-- September 26, 2005
-- December 1, 2005
-- April 6, 2006
-- August 3, 2006
-- August 28, 2006
-- October 22, 2006
-- March 26, 2007
-- May 25, 2007
-- August 8, 2007
-- November 20, 2007
-- March 30, 2008
-- June 10, 2008
-- June 12, 2008
-- Aug. 18, 2008
-- Dec. 19, 2008
-- Apr. 3, 2009
-- June 18, 2009
