 Photo by Mark Mitchell
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| Women's Head Field Hockey Coach Peel Hawthorne '80 mentors one of her players, Kate Baird '06. |
It's a tough time to be a college sports fan. Stories of institutional corruption, recruiting violations, academic dishonesty and felonious behavior dominate ESPN and the sports pages. Coaches, athletes, administrators, boosters -- all are complicit in tarnishing their sports and their universities in a hundred different ways.
Of course, these stories do have one thing in common, not one of them originated in Williamsburg.
Recruiting, competition, academics -- at William and Mary, it's all in perspective and aboveboard. Demands for on-field success are balanced with expectations for academic achievement. Athletic potential becomes athletic accomplishment, and it all starts with the Tribe coaches -- an exceptional group of men and women dedicated to their jobs, their university, and most importantly, their athletes.
William and Mary's 23 head coaches are as different as their varied sports, but they share a few traits. "They all have great personal integrity and are very knowledgeable in their sports," says Athletics Director Terry Driscoll.
"Across the board, these coaches are very competitive," says Bobby Dwyer M.Ed. '94, assistant athletics director for development. "They like to win every contest they compete in. And that includes helping to develop student-athletes' potential. The coaches really get to know the kids, more than just, 'How high can you jump? How fast can you run?'"
That's not to say William and Mary doesn't place the same high premium on success, indeed, it adds an impressive dimension to the winning ways of the 23 Tribe teams. The College regularly sends at least half-a-dozen teams to their respective NCAA tournaments, and holds 70 Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) championships, best in the conference by a wide margin. And the 500 athletes who wear green and gold regularly include dozens of Phi Beta Kappas and All-Americans; in 2002-03, athletes averaged a 3.03 GPA.
As a result, the College is the proud home of a model blend of academics and athletics, where sports exist to complement, not dominate, the educational mission of the university. It makes William and Mary an attractive place for coaches to work ... and a tough place for them to leave.
Decades Of Success, A Season At A Time
Flip through any Flat Hat or Colonial Echo printed since the Nixon administration, and you'll read about at least one coach who's still patrolling the sidelines at William and Mary. Now that Al Albert '69, M.Ed. '71, Tribe men's soccer coach for 33 years, has stepped down (see sidebar), men's gymnastics coach Cliff Gauthier leads the seniority list with 31 years at William and Mary. But he has plenty of company in the longevity department -- other long-termers include Volleyball Coach Debbie Hill with 26 years at the College, Women's Soccer Coach John Daly and Football Coach Jimmye Laycock '70 with 24 years, Track Coach Dan Stimson with 18 years, Track and Women's Cross Country Coach Pat Van Rossum with 18 years ... it's an impressive list for any occupation, but for coaches, whose jobs are only as secure as their last season, it's downright astonishing.
"Ten of our 18 head coaches have 10 years or more of experience," Driscoll says. "They are all very successful, they've had other opportunities, but have chosen to stay at William and Mary to teach and coach the types of kids that we attract."
When Hill started her job at William and Mary, she coached both volleyball and track, in addition to teaching a full load of physical education classes. Throughout the years, things have changed, but Hill
has remained. "I love the quality of life here," she says. "The students are intelligent and highly motivated -- they're good people. The athletic administration is extremely supportive, knowledgeable [about volleyball], and concerned about us," she adds. "That's impressive because we're not a major revenue sport."
Track Coach Dan Stimson agrees that student-athletes play a large role in keeping coaches at the College. "The kids come here for the right reasons," he says. "The quality of life here is tremendous for them, for me, and for my family."
Stimson is one of several coaches whose resume includes stints at big-name athletic institutions -- in his case, the University of Tennessee. Comparing coaching in the Volunteer Nation and in the 'Burg is like "apples and oranges," he says. "Admissions [at Tennessee] was not a problem, frankly. We had an unlimited budget -- in 1985 we spent $25,000 just on recruiting in 38 states. We'd spend more money on one spring trip than we spend in a whole year [at William and Mary]."
Financing in the athletic department, as with the College as a whole, is always a matter of concern. Athletic officials freely admit that they'd love to have better training and competition facilities to attract more talented recruits, and more money to bring their coaches' salaries in line with their peers. But money brings its own set of demands.
"Big-time sports universities are driven by dollars," says Jim Kaplan '57, a trustee of the Tribe Club and a member of the College's Athletic Hall of Fame. "That's not the case here. When you're driven by dollars, coaches and athletic departments have great pressure to succeed -- and that kind of pressure can cause the kinds of problems we see at other universities."
Student-Athletes: Study Hard, Play Hard
One way William and Mary's coaches avoid a lot of the problems that their colleagues face is by holding athletic recruits to the College's high academic standards. It's not an easy position to take. These are times when the concept of a "student-athlete" is an oxymoron, if not an outright joke. At the University of Georgia in 2001, for instance, basketball players sweated through a final exam featuring questions like "How many points is a 3-point basket worth?" as noted in a story appearing in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, March 5, 2004. But William and Mary holds to the classical definition of the student-athlete, one who values success in the classroom even more than on the field.
"Our athletes here are true student-athletes," Dris-coll says. "They're students first, and athletes second. We look at our coaches as our faculty, teaching and educating our student-athletes not only in their chosen sports, but also as people. Hopefully, through the process of competing at an intercollegiate level with the types of coaches we have, these students will leave the university having a great education, a great athletic experience, and having learned a great deal about themselves and their sport."
That balance -- the ability to take what you've learned on the field and apply it to the classroom, and vice versa -- defines the William and Mary student-athlete. "The NCAA indicates that the athletic department should meet the academic level of the institution and be an integral part of the institution," Driscoll says. "We do that at William and Mary in simple ways -- no separate dorms, no separate dining facilities, everybody takes the same classes." At William and Mary, athletes graduate at a rate within 4 to 5 percentage points of the College, and 99 percent of the student-athletes who complete their eligibility at the College end up graduating.
Driscoll acknowledges that the College's high standards present difficulties
in recruiting. "The joke in recruiting is, 'what's your name, what's your SAT score?'" he laughs. "In reality, the College is not going to admit anyone who doesn't have a reasonable chance of graduating. That eliminates the vast majority of athletes who apply to this institution. We find ourselves competing at the very top of the recruiting pyramid."
"Right off the bat, when I'm recruiting athletes, I talk to them about the mission, the values, the philosophy of the [gymnastics] program," Gauthier says. "Quite frankly, it's not for everyone. If you want to just be an athlete, you're not going to do as well. I want to deal with really special people, so I have a nationwide search to find people who match up to the philosophy driving our program and can reap the benefits of going to a school like William and Mary."
Honoring the Academic Obligation
Anyone who's spent a day at college knows full well the range of distractions that can keep any student away from the books. Add in several hours of practice, weight training, and travel to away games, and it's easy for athletes to let their studies slide. But William and Mary's coaches don't let their students off that easily.
"We're very conscious that these kids have a big obligation to school," Stimson says. "All the coaches know when midterms are coming. We try to do what we can to take a little of the stress off. Hopefully we use athletics as a stress reliever, not a stress builder." He's on to something; the team has one to two Phi Beta Kappas every year, and one of the College's five Rhodes Scholars, Andrew Zawacki '94, ran track.
"For us, volleyball skills are about fourth in line," says Hill. "We teach academic skills, life skills, social skills, and along the way, you'll pick up some volley-ball skills."
And while William and Mary keeps academics and athletics in balance, it's competing against universities that don't necessarily have the same perspective. For that reason, the College's athletes must bring their "A" games, week after week, season after season.
In fact, "achieve your potential" could serve as the unofficial motto of Tribe Athletics. Raw talent only takes an athlete so far; the best coaches are able to turn potential into achievement. It's a specialty of Wil-liam and Mary's coaching staff, and it's common to see unheralded freshmen become star athletes in their later years.
"[At William and Mary] you have to look at the whole picture," Laycock says. "As a coach, you have to focus on not only the player, but the person and the student. We can't isolate ourselves in football and football only. That won't work here."
Mentoring On and Off the Field
At William and Mary, the coaches' jobs don't end when the game does. Tribe coaches make commitments to their athletes that can last 24 hours a day while they're in school, and, often, for a lifetime after they graduate.
"The people we get here are very self-motivated, very Type A," Stimson says. "Your main job is to protect them from being so hard on themselves." In many ways, it's not so different from being a parent -- a comparison that many former athletes are happy to make.
"Coach Stimson was very much a father figure, my 'dad' away from home," says Jessica Unger Stanek '98, a triple jumper at the College and now a New Jersey veterinarian. "He was very understanding -- he made it fun to go to practice, but he understood that sometimes there was more going on than practice. It felt like I was part of a big family -- the closest friends I made at the College were on the team."
"We try to make it a family atmosphere," Stimson says. "When I got here, the men's and women's teams didn't get along at all. Since then, I think we've kind of overdone it -- we've had at least six couples get married, and I don't know how many 'track grandchildren' I've got."
Pick another sport, and you'll find a similar story. "Coach [Gauthier] puts so much energy into the [gymnastics] program, it gives me a model for the pursuit of my own goals," says Matt Roosevelt '04, a gymnast from Berkeley, Calif. "He's always encouraging us to do things outside the gym -- he'll let us miss practice as long as we have a good reason."
Sometimes, the knowledge that athletes gain is its own reward. "I would like all of my students to understand the game well enough to be able to coach," says Field Hockey Coach Peel Hawthorne '80, a 17-year veteran at the College. "I try to give them the ability to make good decisions once they get out on the field. William and Mary students are highly capable of handling things when there's a lot going on -- a lot happening on all fronts -- whether it's on the field or off it."
Beyond Graduation
For every athlete, there comes a time when the clock reaches 00:00 once and for all. And how they deal with what comes afterward depends in large measure on how they've been coached in their careers.
"I've learned as much, if not more, after college from Cliff than I learned in college," says Doug Casey '89, a former Tribe gymnast now working at an advertising firm in Hartford, Conn. "Cliff teaches more through action than through words -- he taught us to be self-sufficient, to ask questions, to use our intelligence and share our ideas. It was never just about
gymnastics -- nobody goes into gymnastics professionally unless you're in the circus. For Cliff, academics and a knowledge of yourself came first."
That kind of ongoing appreciation is a common sentiment among athletics alumni. "I hear former student-athletes saying all the time, 'some of the most important lessons I learned were the ones I learned from my coach,'" says Dwyer.
The gratitude runs in both directions. When asked about their proudest moments, Albert echoes the sentiments of his fellow coaches when he says, "Many of my proudest moments lie ahead. It's most rewarding to see where my players end up after they graduate." Some of William and Mary's athletes have turned pro after graduation, but many more have notched significant success in business, medicine, entertainment and politics. The coaches' pride in their former charges is evident, and well-deserved.
"Most coaches see their athletes for four, or at most five years, and then they wash their hands of them," Gauthier says. "At William and Mary, it's a lot different. You come in, you get a good education, and you and your teammates are part of a family. The associations you make here with your teammates and your coaches, you keep for a lifetime."
"I have long-term relationships with so many of my student-athletes," Stimson says. "I'm not far from recruiting their kids. Then I'll know I'm really old."
Jay Busbee '90 was the sports editor of the Flat Hat in 1989-90. He is the author of two books and numerous national magazine articles, and lives in Atlanta, Ga., with his wife and two children.
