1. The meeting came to order at 10:35 a.m. Members attending were Athletic Director Steve Kirkham; Faculty representatives Jacqueline Berning, Charlie Shub and Travis Peterson; Academic Coordinator Robert King; SAAC representative Jason Shaver; Staff Representatives Mark Janssen and Gudrun McCollum; and UBAC representative Al Schoffstall.
2. The minutes of the March 10 meeting were approved without dissent.
3. Interim Coach Kirkham's season wrap up Report:
In his 25 years of coaching, Kirkham characterized this past year as the most interesting. His players tried to get better and were competitive towards the end of the season. Kirkham did not like the lone wolf (no travel partner) which had UCCS playing half their conference schedule against rested teams. That has been changed in basketball and CSU-Pueblo will be the travel partner next year.
Recruiting has gone well. He has looked at over 100 and looking forward towards next year. He has committed to coaching next year, but hopes to find a full time replacement for the 2011-2012 season.
He expects the team to improve next year.
Finally, he noted that defending national champion Emporia State University will be competing in the early season basketball tournament at the Gallogly Event Center.
4. Athletics Director Report:
Kirkham started out discussing facilities. He believes the situation looked worse than it actually was owing to the construction schedule. Next year, there will be an entire additional semester of availability. The Gallogly center will be devoted to athletics from mid August until the end of March (spring break). This is all but about 6 weeks of the academic year. Moreover, the old gym will be available from when basketball starts until volleyball ends. Summer camps will continue to be held in the rec center. Kirkham noted that the events center has always been an interim solution and eventually the entire athletics operation will be located on North Nevada. Currently, the biggest problem is scheduling small group workouts during the non traditional season. Depending on the usage pattern of the event center and the old gym, those facilities may be available. When they are not, the rec center provides an alternative. Kirkham noted this solution is not something we were wanting to do because the rec center belongs to all students and the space being co-opted for athletics is not ideal.
Once the training room is moved into the new space, the locker rooms in the old gym will be redone to provide separate facilities for each of the three teams that compete in the event center.
Academics:
Continues to be a positive. Student athletes continue to maintaining GPAs over 3.0.
Recruiting:
Fifty National letters of intent were mailed today. Kirkham expects 70 to 80 new student athletes next year. He anticipates improvements by most teams. A slight negative is that all of our recruits must also be good students, unlike some schools with open enrollment.
Budget:
Given that athletics is funded primarily with student fees, Kirkham is pleased that enrollment is increasing.
Fundraising:
The economy makes things different. Athletics is looking at improvements to the annual golf tournament and combining the tournament with the annual silent auction.
RMAC:
The conference is talking about expansion. There is a national trend for more conference games and fewer non conference games to save on travel. With 16 teams, the conference could go to two divisions and then have fewer long road trips to play at remote schools in the other division.
5. Shub gave a brief FAR report. He will be attending the RMAC FAR meeting this coming Friday and will report on it at the May meeting. He has been working on trying to get student government to fill their two slots on the committee. He reminded committee that elections for chair would be held next month.
6. Jason Shaver gave the SAAC (Student Athlete Advisory Committee) report.
- Picnic: Sunday, April 25 after the Regis game at approximately 3:00 PM
- CUSPY: Wednesday, April 28 in the old gym starting at 7:00 PM
7. At 11:30, the meeting was adjourned.
