Last week, Sports Editor Matt Boucher sat down with Virginia Athletic Director Craig Littlepage to talk about the current state of Virginia athletics. Here are some excerpts from the conversation.
Q: How has the recent national exposure of having Virginia's name associated with D'Brickashaw Ferguson, Ryan Zimmerman and yourself (on the NCAA Selection Committee) benefited the program?
A: I think it's not only significant for the athletic department in general, but I think it's a plus for the University to have the University's good name in the public and getting positive spin as a result of so many of the great individual stories, as well as some of the fantastic team stories and department stories. The success on the part of some of our former student-athletes is very much an affirmation of the types of things that we have been moving toward in terms of elevating our program.
Q: Virginia has some of the most generous donors in the nation, how have their contributions helped elevate the Athletic Department?
A: We have been fortunate to have benefited by the generosity of many thousands of donors all over the country, and that speaks to the opportunities to be able to recruit the very best prospective student-athletes from all over the country. Specifically, what I refer to is the initiative to fully fund all of our scholarships and, thereby, give every one of our coaches in 25 sports the full allotment of scholarships to be able to field the types of teams that we feel as though can be successful both from an ACC standpoint and nationally. [Only a handful of universities fully fund all sports programs.]
Q: You mentioned the ten-year plan, how is the department doing as it nears the halfway mark?
A: We're tracking along pretty well in terms of achieving some of these benchmarks both in regard to graduation rates -- our goal is to graduate every student-athlete that completes their eligibility with us. We also have set competitive goals. The goal was 70 conference championships and 12 national championships. In terms of a yearly tracking, we're probably a little bit behind, but given that we have just now been able to ramp up for two years where we're fully funded, we've had some changes in terms of bringing new coaches into our program, we feel as though we're on a pretty good path. I would say some of our success will be backloaded.
Q: Dave Leitao brought a great deal of success in his first year -- how have other coaches hired under your watch fared?
A: Since 2001, we as an administrative team have done a very, very good job when we've had opportunities to bring new people into our team, if you will -- new head coaches in particular. Start with [men's tennis coach] Brian Boland -- when he was hired from Indiana State University to take over our program, at that time, in 2001, we were probably seventh, eighth or ninth in the ACC in terms of competitive success. What he has done in five years to go from being a program that was in the bottom third of the ACC to being a top-five, top-ten program [nationally] over a three-year period of time -- he's done a phenomenal job.
Jan Mann was hired to take over [women's golf] as the first head coach and, in the team's second year of competition, goes to nationals and has Leah Wigger finish second from an individual standpoint.
Brian O'Connor comes into the baseball situation and, in his first year, pops [44] wins, goes to the NCAAs and becomes the first program in the state of Virginia to host NCAA first round. And follows that up with [41] wins a year ago.
What [women's tennis coach] Mark Guilbeau has done, what [men's golf coach] Bowen Sargent has done -- we've been able to attract very highly qualified coaches that understand the University of Virginia, that believe in the University of Virginia.
Q: Which programs are you looking to improve in the coming seasons?
A: I would look at softball, with new head coach Karen Johns, as being a program that we're keeping our eye on with great anticipation for what she will do with that program. The early results in her first year seem to be very good in terms of establishing a framework for how that program will be conducted. We are watching very closely what she's done and are confident that she's going to build an outstanding program here.
Michelle Madison with the field hockey program, similarly, is now approaching her first year. Her track record at Michigan State, what she did with her student-athletes -- clearly this is someone who is one of the best field hockey coaches in the country. That's another program that, before too long, is going to be right back in the thick of ACC championship competition, as well as nationally.
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