Chris Whitaker
July 23, 2008 11:13 pm
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AMERICUS — After a long day of work at his local YMCA, Anthony Sargent was asleep early Wednesday evening when Georgia Southwestern men’s basketball coach Mike Leeder woke him with the news.
It’s the news that GSW Associate Athletics Director Jaclyn Kaylor had been waiting on for more than a week. She received that much-anticipated phone call Wednesday morning, and now the university can breathe a sigh of relief as it was declared and official member of NCAA’s Division II.
“Today was kind of what we’ve been waiting for three years,” said Kaylor, who has held five other titles since coming to GSW in 2004. “This is a culmination of all of our hard work. We’re just so excited for the kids that have with us for three years now, waiting and waiting to be able to go to the postseason, and now we can say ‘here’s your chance.’ ”
Sargent, the Peach Belt Conference’s leader in scoring and 3-pointers made, has been at GSW for one season, but was excited once he learned the team is now eligible for the postseason.
“We have the chance to try and do something now,” said Sargent. “We’ve got more to look forward to. It’s going to be hard to get into (the postseason), but it will be a lot better this time around.”
GSW started the process three years ago with an exploratory phase in which the athletics department learned what goals it had to accomplish in order to gain Division II membership. Then the past two years, GSW has worked toward implementing those goals, and Kaylor said she was confident the university wouldn’t be turned down.
“I don’t think they had any objection of us coming,” she said. “I know how hard we’ve worked to get to this point. The only thing that separates us now from any other Division II school in the country is money. We’re smaller, and we’ve got less people and less of a budget. Other than that, we’re ready to go.”
Athletics Director Randolph Barksdale said the outcome has been a team effort with GSW President Dr. Kendall Blanchard, compliance coordinator Jennifer Rodkey and Kaylor.
“With Jaclyn, Jennifer Rodkey and all the coaches, they did everything they were supposed to do,” he said. “The waiver was the first thing and when we had that in play, it worked out like we hoped it would. A lot of credit also goes to Dr. Blanchard who came in midway through the process and solidified our efforts.”
The biggest challenges that faced the university were compliance and eligibility. Moving from the NAIA level, a new set of rules and policies had to be learned and put into action. Four new positions were hired including a compliance coordinator, head athletic trainer, men’s soccer coach and sports information director.
Head baseball coach Bryan McLain spoke for the entire coaching staff when he spoke of their hard work and dedication to the process.
“Seeing all the effort they’ve put in, along with the good comments we’ve had, their hard work got us here,” he said.
Said Leeder: “From watching the process from afar, this is quite an accomplishment. I’ve watched more paperwork and documentation go out the door, and to watch that come to fruition, I don’t know if anyone’s worked harder than that foursome to get it done.”
GSW looked into moving toward Division II in 1996, but for uncertain reasons, it pulled out of the process. McLain, who enters his fifth season as head coach and 13th overall with the baseball program, said GSW has had a lot of growth since that first exploratory phase, including an on-campus baseball and softball complex, and the addition of the men’s and women’s soccer programs.
Kaylor said the move will help every program in recruiting, and the university is excited for the future of GSW athletics.
“We have a great class coming in ‘08-‘09, and with everybody working hard, it will all play out in the cards once we get into the seasons,” she said. “I think everybody will be seeing the benefits of it.”
The provisional period generally takes four years. North Georgia was cleared after two years to participate as a full member this past season, and GSW will do the same this academic year. Kaylor said full membership takes effect Sept. 1.
Besides postseason play, GSW will have access to NCAA enhancement grand funding, enrollment in the National Letter of Intent program, and student-athletes can participate in the CHAMPS Life Skills program — in which Kaylor will lead — that will teach them life skills such as time management, how to prepare for job interviews and how to balance a checkbook.
Kaylor spoke at the Americus Rotary Club last week and introduced several new features the university is working toward, including increased scholarship funding, hiring more coaches, continued facility improvements and increasing sport sponsorship, which could mean the addition of a women’s golf and men’s cross-country program.
With each of the university’s sports behind in scholarships, that is its main goal — to reach scholarship equivalency. But that is based on money, which is based on enrollment, and GSW has the smallest enrollment in the conference with close to 2,500 students. Lander has an enrollment of 3,000 and USC-Aiken has one of 3,300 while the largest are Columbus State (7,800) and Armstrong Atlantic (7,000).
The men’s and women’s basketball programs in Division II have a maximum of 10 scholarships. Leeder’s program has 7.5 scholarships and women’s coach Kelly Britsky’s is at 6.5. For baseball the max is nine, and McLain has five; for softball it is 7.2, and coach Eddie Ward has 4.2, which is a 1.5 increase from last season.
“We’re going to be working for every penny we can get,” said Kaylor.
Kaylor hopes membership for the Hurricane Club will rise as well as outside support.
And now with the provisional stages complete, the different sports should be more successful at landing top-notch recruits.
“Before, it made us change how we go about things and the kids we go after,” said McLain, whose team finished 17-34 and had six freshmen, many of which saw playing time. “It’s exciting to know we don’t have to worry about telling kids, ‘hey we’re not going to be able to do this and compete in postseason’ and all that.
“For anybody that pays attention to this league, you go back and look at the rosters and see lots of juniors, seniors and transfers. You don’t see a lot of four-year players because the talent level is so good. We’ve been lucky with some good kids, but we’ve struggled having to go with all these freshmen dotted all over the field out there, and we make freshmen mistakes. It now opens us up to get these junior college players and transfers of that nature.”
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding the announcement, but Kaylor said it’s just the beginning.
“We’re going to enjoy being active and not having to jump through hoops and wait on a phone call next year and turning in a report will be good,” she said. “It’s a year not to relax, but enjoy it. We have a lot of things on the books to try, and we’re trying to do a lot of small things to make (the student-athletes’) experience here better on and off the field. We’re real excited.”
PBC enrollments
(approximates)
Columbus St. 7,800
Armstrong Atlantic 7,000
Augusta St. 6,330
Clayton St. 6,000
UNC Pembroke 5,630
Georgia College 5,500
North Georgia 4,800
Francis Marion 4,000
USC-Aiken 3,300
Lander 3,000
Ga. Southwestern 2,500
Scholarship equivalencies
Div II GSW
Basketball (M) 10.0 7.5
Basketball (W) 10.0 6.5
Baseball 9.0 5.0
Softball 7.2 4.2
Soccer (M) 9.0 N/A
Soccer (W) 9.9 N/A
Tennis (M) 4.5 N/A
Tennis (W) 6.0 N/A
Golf (M) 3.6 N/A
X-Country (W) 5.0 N/A
*numbers gathered for top 4 sports
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