We are on the brink of a first in Erskine Athletics this Fall. We are going to host 1st round tournament action in men’s soccer and volleyball barring unforeseen circumstances. Never in the history of Erskine as a NCAA Division II member in Conference Carolinas have we hosted two first round tournament games in the Fall. It is even more exciting because our volleyball team was picked to finish sixth in the conference (currently 2nd) and men’s soccer was picked to finish last (currently 4th). In other words, our Fall sports are overachieving on preseason predictions. It doesn’t stop just with those two sports. Women’s soccer, as I noted two weeks ago, has been tormented by injuries to key players all season, yet they picked up a win at Coker on Saturday to guarantee at least a seventh place finish in the league and a spot in the tournament. Our men’s and women’s cross country teams ran Saturday at Lenoir-Rhyne and nearly every runner turned in their best performance of the year. We have teams that are exceeding their expectations, which is a wonderful thing.

The essence of sports is getting the most of one’s abilities but it gets to another level when players and teams surpass others expectations. Our women’s volleyball team is only in their second year of existence. No one could have expected such a dramatic rise to the top from Heather Vahjen’s squad. And it was in early August when men’s soccer coach Warren Turner wondered, out loud to me, if his team would win a game. Yet, here they are competing at the upper echelon of Conference Carolinas. I am struck by how much the landscape of Erskine Athletics is changing. We expect to be good now. We didn’t expect that ten years ago but now every team takes the field thinking Erskine should win. It is exciting because everyone likes to win. It reminds me of the quote, “What happens when your reality exceeds your dreams?”

Conference Carolinas has an award for the top athletic program each year amongst its institutions. We have never dreamed of winning what is coined as the Joby Hawn Cup. The past two years we have finished 7th in Joby Hawn Cup standings, which is the best Erskine has ever done in its history in the 12-school league. This year our goal is to finish 5th. Thanks to five overachieving sports this Fall, we will find ourselves in 5th or higher by Fall’s end. It is a great start to a year we expect to be special for Erskine Athletics. And what do we do when our reality then exceeds our dreams? We set those dreams higher. So don’t be surprised in the near future that our goal will change to finish first in the Joby Hawn Cup. In the meantime, way to go Fall sports and good luck in your upcoming tournaments. For volleyball and men’s soccer, the excitement and energy in Due West will definitely be unprecedented. It’s gonna be fun!

The end of classes on Friday began fall break at Erskine. As I walked home Friday evening I thought how quickly the first half of the semester had gone. It seems like we just started the fall semester yesterday. I got a bigger taste of the pace of time later that night when my brother sent me a text with the news that I was missing my high school reunion, my 30th. Could that be possible? It struck me how quickly 30 years had passed as I stayed awake in bed much of the night. Time is strange for me. For the past twenty years I have worked in collegiate athletics. The student-athletes stay the same age, I don’t, but somehow I missed that part. I am no longer young and time passes so quickly now. I was reminded of time as well this past Thursday night as my wife, a national certified personal trainer (translation, she is in better shape than me) held a “Fitness Fight against Cancer.” Our men’s basketball team and women’s lacrosse team took part in an event that attracted more than 100 people into Phillips Gym. Cancer has affected many if not most families. My wife lost her mom to cancer two years ago and 14 years ago to the day on Friday one of my best friends lost his battle to the disease. Time stood still for a moment when both of those special people passed away, but the reality is that the memories with them don’t ever fade. A semester, two years, fourteen years, or thirty years, time goes fast but memories don’t. I still remember playing basketball and baseball in the state tournament 30 years ago, still remember my mother-in-law’s face at my wedding reception and playing golf late into the Louisville, Kentucky night with my friend. Time can go as fast as it wants; I will keep clinging to those memories.

So Friday morning new memories began. The men’s basketball team began the official season at a 5:30 a.m. practice. Fifteen freshmen and a transfer joined 9 returning players at the first practice. We have conditioned for the past month but it’s not quite the same until every player is on the floor at the same time with a basketball. It wasn’t much different than 12 years ago when we started practice on October 15th at 6:00 a.m. with my first team at Erskine. Most of those players were freshmen just like they were 12 years later. We are quite a bit more talented than we were 12 years ago but much hasn’t changed. They are still 18-year-olds chasing dreams. A former player of mine, Jeff Wiersma, chased his dream 12 years ago. He became one of Erskine’s all-time leading scorers and rebounders. I know Jeff is proud of his accomplishments at Erskine. Jeff is today a husband and dad of two young boys and a professional with the Milliken Corporation. I don’t remember much about Jeff’s heroic performance against #2 nationally ranked Queens College his senior year, but I do remember a young man who faced adversity and fought through it as a player and now uses those same lessons on a daily basis as a great father and husband. We will see those young men emerge this year as well. I don’t know how many games we will win this year, but I do know those games, win or lose, will have a large part in creating successful men and lasting memories.

Unfortunately, this season is going to go by way too fast for all of our teams. I hope our athletes will relish their opportunity. It is hard when you are 18 years old to realize how fast 30 years will go. My prayer is they embrace every second, every practice, every opportunity. But most of all, I hope they build memories that last forever so that when 30 years do go by for them, they will lie in their bed at night and re-live how wonderful those times were. Time doesn’t stop so we better make the best of the time we have.

Injuries are a part of sports. Anyone who plays the games long enough experiences some type of injury. Collegiate athletes play at a high level and most end up at some point during the course of the year in our athletic training room. Often teams with the most success are the ones who avoid key injuries during their season. Coaches do everything they can to prepare athletes for the rigors of the physicality in their sport. Sometimes it works, sometimes freak plays get in the way and injuries occur.

Our women’s soccer team has been bitten by the injury plague this season. Three standout players, Amanda Tinker, Molly Harpe, and Emily Brown have suffered season-ending injuries in games this season. Bailey Miller, another standout player, has missed several games. Because of these injuries, a season of high expectations has turned into a massive struggle for Coach Gary Winchester’s squad. Until Saturday that is, when a short-handed squad played its finest game of the season, defeating Newberry, 1-0, at Huggins Field. The players were incredible but the most noticeable thing on Saturday was the three team members out for the season. Being an injured team member is hard on anyone. No athlete likes to suffer and watch from the sideline as your teammates fight for a win especially when you are an excellent player. Yet Saturday was special to watch. Gary Winchester is a demanding coach but instructions for the Flying Fleet players came Saturday from more than Coach Winchester. The wounded Fleet of Tinker, Harpe, and Brown were doing much of the instructing and encouraging of teammates. They didn’t spend their time sulking on the bench about their injuries. Instead they got involved in the game the only way they could, as coaches. The win was a proud moment for Erskine women’s soccer and those young women had much to do with it even though their prolific skills could not be used on the field.

It is said that losing doesn’t just build character, it reveals it. I would say the same for injuries. People often show their character when hurt. Over the years I have seen many young people have season-ending injuries and no longer participate in team activities possibly because of they have lost their self-worth by not being able to play anymore. Last basketball season, Marko Latinovic, a senior from Serbia went down with a season-ending knee injury and completely changed his role on the team. Marko went from a star forward to a star encourager and spent much of his time mentoring a freshman who had taken his place. It was an incredible selfless act from a senior who would never play another collegiate game. I saw the same type of character from Molly Harpe, Amanda Tinker, and Emily Brown on Saturday. They won’t get any of the credit that Kimrey Angotti-Smith received from her goal or Casey Craft from her assist or Si’Ara Washington for her shutout in goal, but they were highly responsible for the win. Marko Latinovic will heal soon from his knee injury and have a successful professional playing career in Serbia. And Molly and Emily will return next year as two of the league’s best players. Good things will happen to all of them but we have already seen a clear vision of outstanding character, a trait that will long outlast any athletic career.

The NCAA requires its member institutions to conduct a self-study of its intercollegiate athletics program every five years with the purpose of enhancing integrity amongst members. Erskine will be required to complete its third Institutional Self-Study Guide (ISSG) by June 2011. It will also be my third journey through what I originally deemed as a tedious process. I first worked on an ISSG in 1998 while athletics director at St. Andrews College. I was fairly new to collegiate athletics administration so I was extremely fortunate to have a Vice-President at St. Andrews named Bill Loftis who did most of the work for me especially on the documentation. Erskine completed its first ISSG in 2000 under the direction of athletics director Chip Sherer. Chip’s work was such good quality that by 2005 little had changed in Erskine Athletics and therefore few revisions were needed. Now here it is 2010 and we begin the process again. The problem is however, that this time, much has changed with both participation and operations and the process will be far more complex than it was in 2005. Hopefully the effort and the outcome will help us on our journey to enhance integrity in Flying Fleet Athletics.

I decided Friday to begin preliminary work on the ISSG. My first task was reviewing the 2000 and 2005 documents. It was these documents that inspired my blog this week. And one word stood out, growth. In 2000, Erskine athletics reported that 135 student-athletes participated on sports teams. The Erskine student body was comprised of 495 students, meaning 27% of the student body participated in sports. The number of athletes grew to 170 in 2005 as the student body reached 545, meaning 31% of the student body were athletes. The 2010 numbers are decidedly different. This year 250 students at Erskine out of a student body of 530 have a link to intercollegiate athletics. Today 47% of Erskine students participate in athletics, up from 27% ten years ago. We project that within our 14 sports teams we will have 280 student athletes in the fall of 2011. If that happens, Erskine Athletics will have doubled its participation levels in eleven years. There are many positives to that increased participation level but there are also many fears. My fears as we began to grow five years ago were that we would see a gradual decline in academic excellence and a gradual increase in disciplinary problems. Every collegiate athletics program deals with disciplinary issues, but the reality is that we dealt with just as many seven years ago when I first became athletics director as we do today (please hear the knock on wood).

So what about academic excellence? Erskine Athletics has long been recognized with high graduation rates, and we definitely didn’t want to see that drop with higher participation numbers. Last spring we saw half of our student-athletes make the Conference Carolinas Presidential Honor Roll (3.0 GPA or higher). But the more telling sign came with the release of our graduation rates for 2010. The data lists our student-athlete graduation rate at 77% while the graduation rate for all students is 69%. Considering student-athletes are factored into all students, it is safe to comment that the graduation rates for Erskine student-athletes is quite a bit higher than the rest of the student body. As the late and former President of the NCAA Myles Brand once said, “In God we trust, for everything else bring data.” We have data that supports we can grow and not lose ground on academic quality. We know it will always be a challenge but it is a major focus for all of our coaches.

I know the ISSG will unveil many changes needed to be made in Erskine Athletics. It will be a long process but by June I think all of our department will be the better off because we went through it. Flying Fleet Athletics is quite different than it was ten years ago. Change is good and so is growth. I hope someone undertakes this task in five years and finds growth still at the forefront of Erskine Athletics. Go Fleet!