Is there a rule that’s not in place that should be?
Janet: I saw rules that are still in existence, that make it very hard for the university to comply with very mundane rules. And what we need to get at is the bigger picture. How do we keep the focus on the student athlete? What is it that we need to do for the student athlete? And continue to look at their welfare. And most rules support that, I would argue that to anyone that most of the NCAA rules, that you could distill them down, support the student athlete. And, again, the manual is massive. NCAA has done these rewriting chores before on the manual, a couple of times, I’m old enough to have seen that. I think it’s very important to just pare that down, and what is it that we want our student athletes to do? And how do we want to support them? How do we want to make that community that does support them?
Tim: I won’t speak for other departments, though I have a strong sense that many of them believe the same things I believe. We put the student athlete is the center of everything we do. The student athletes are the bull’s eye in the center and then in the rings around them are the coaches who support them most directly, and then the administrators, and then the ring after that is the faculty and staff. Is every decision we’re making putting our student athletes in the best possible position to be able to succeed athletically, academically, and socially? So if you keep the student athlete at the center of everything you do, then you’re committed to equity and diversity in all of its forms. Now, what is important is the commercialism, is the sometimes rabid desire, or the public’s, to know everything that’s going on about a department. And so our challenge as administrators is to say, yes, all of that in a very measured way is important, but we have to be able to convey to our constituents outside of the university that it’s important for them to remember that it’s about the student athlete. And sometimes I think that’s what the challenge is. I don’t know if that makes sense.
Janet: Student athletes are with the athletics department for five years. There’s no other entity that can really say that on a day-to-day basis. With athletics, the coaches see them day in and day out for several years. And at UMKC, the dedication is there. That’s true about most NCAA athletics departments around the country. They work hard, they care about the student athletes, and at the same time, they want to make a difference in the community, and expect their student athletes to do the same thing. For instance, UMKC’s student athletes are involved in so many things on campus. They’re involved in the Women’s Center, the Violence Against Women Walk, they’re involved in V-Day operations, they’re active on several community committees, and again, those are student athletes that represent not only the athletics program, but the university as a whole, which is a huge plus for the community. And the students enjoy it, and appreciate it and learn from it, and go out into the world and make the world what they can once they leave the university campus.
Do you think that that’s an example of the great things that student athletes are doing that doesn’t get the media’s focus?
Janet: It’s important for people to know that, so goes the world, so goes athletics and athletics is under the microscope. And that’s not fair. So we have to work with that. And how do we make that work? We instill that in not only our administrators, or our coaches, but our student athletes. And that’s up to the coaches, that’s up to who you hire, it’s a complex entity of interactions and relationships and programs that there’s really nothing compares to it on campus.
What is the role of the athletics department in the lives of the student athletes, and what are those responsibilities? What should the role of the department be?
Tim: Young people come here at 17 or 18 years old and they go through a tremendous maturation process that culminates five years later when they’re 21 or 22, then they expectation is that they go out into the world and become valued members of our society and future leaders. That four to five year time period is often the first time they’re away from home. There’s the rigor of being a division one athlete, there’s the expectations to perform at a high level academically, there’s relationships, and the social piece, and we have to help them manage that. You give them a hug when they deserve a hug, a stern talking to when they need it, and everything in between all based on making them the best possible individual that they can be. We do it by treating them with respect, honor, dignity and civility.
Janet: We forget this as we’re talking about the seriousness of the things that are happening, athletics brings a great thing to the community, to the students, it brings joy, a common purpose. Those are all things that are looked for in our world, and intercollegiate athletics can provide that, and does provide that, and not only for the student athletes but for those who support them, and their parents, and the community, and the campus community, and that is a positive thing. We forget that there’s a lot of hard work, and there is a lot of hard work, and there are things that happen, but it does provide, just an outlet, a way to identify readily with your university.
Josh: Our coaches are the front porch of our athletics department. We are the ones in the positions to be their pseudo parents, their educators, their role models, their mentors, their life coaches. Ideally, the coaches that we hire portray the values that we want them to portray and instill those values in the student athletes. And I think if you look nationally whether it’s small school or a large school, that doesn’t make any difference. But if you look at the truly successful coaches, they’re the ones that are doing that. They are probably also winning along the way, that kind of goes hand in hand, but they are the ones that are providing that inspiration and that direction for that young man and young woman and teaching them all those other skills that go along with it.
What skills and strengths do student athletes graduate with that other students might not?
Tim: Time management skills. Being a division I student athlete and a really good student you could argue both are full-time jobs. Attention to detail is something student athletes come away with. We live in a world where there’s an unfortunate sense of entitlement, and one of the great values that student athletes learn is how to work as part of a team. It’s about the role that you play. Because when you go into society, it’s not about you, it’s about the role you play in society. So I think teamwork is something that they learn, being accepting of individual differences.
Josh: They learn about working towards goals, focus, all those things go hand in hand. I’ve known several truly elite athletes in my life that—a gold medalist in the Olympics. These type of athletes are visual-kinesthetic learners, they’re focused, task driven, and one of our jobs is to keep that focus, yet allow the athlete to see the bigger picture. They’ve always got that goal and they have tunnel vision in order to get there.
Tim: They also learn resiliency. We talk all the time about “success is failure turned inside out.” One good example is our softball team, and where our softball program was when I got here, and the success that they recently had last spring.
Janet: They won the championship!
What’s the relationship between the athletics side of the house and the academic side of the house, and how do those two work together to then produce this stellar student?
Tim: At every institution I’ve been at where we were successful academically, it was because we had a strong working relationship with the academic side of the house. When I started at UMKC, we had three tutors, now we have over 40 tutors and two full-time academic people on the athletics staff, plus a graduate assistant. What I challenge our academic staff to do is take C students and make them B, take B students and make them A, and let’s not forget about the A students—how can we continue to keep them challenged and continuing to do well?
Josh: We have a great relationship with academics on this campus, but I think it begins with the fact that as we were recruiting individuals, prospective student athletes, we are communicating with them the importance of academics. We are evaluating their transcripts, we are looking at their likelihood of success when they get here, and we are then making conscious decisions on what we do once they get here. And it’s paid dividends, frankly.
Janet: Consistency is important among and between the teams. When you look at where some of the high-profile BCS schools make mistakes—and they do make mistakes—is when they allow a coach to pretty much bring in any athletes who they want without assessing all these things that Josh articulated. Who is this person academically? Who is this person socially? And how will they do here? And that’s not solely left up to the coach, there’s a group of people on the administrative staff who are involved in that, from compliance to academics to the athletic director. It’s not about telling the coach who to recruit, but help him or her make sure that student athlete really is going to succeed here, and do they have a chance to succeed here. And when you see some of these issues, this is the one percent we’re talking about. Some of these issues are about not having strong leadership within the administrative program. If there’s not strong leadership in athletics, if people are not being consistent, if people say, “Well, this is OK if we let this slide with him because he’s got a great basketball or football program.” And that corrodes the rest of the staff’s morale. You have to treat your coaches and your teams and your student athletes similarly. The NCAA has important rules to help you ensure students graduate. There’s no doubt that our student athletes graduate at a higher graduation rate than anybody on campus. They can’t stay here for 10 years to get a degree. You have to be going for a degree within two years, or you can’t play. Schools could do a better job of that with the overall student population. Chancellor Leo E. Morton would love to see more achievement of our general student population. Our athletes, and he says this often, our athletes do it all the time, why can’t the rest of the school?