Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1462941
A P R I L 2 0 2 2 11 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M and the university's incoming president will not take office until May 10. "If asked to provide input, I'll cer- tainly do that," Barbour said. "I love Penn State and I want only what's best for Penn State." Barbour came to PSU in July 2014 fol- lowing 10 years at Cal, arriving in State College only six months after Frank- lin was hired and five months after Eric Barron was named university president. She made a number of consequential hires in the years that followed, includ- ing a pair of basketball coaches, put- ting Micah Shrewsberry in charge of the men's program last year and bringing in Carolyn Kieger in 2019 to turn around a struggling women's team. Other coaches that Barbour brought aboard include Jeff Cook (men's soccer), Jeff Kampersal (women's ice hockey), Sarah Brown (women's gymnastics), Al- exandra Anghelescu (women's tennis) and her most recent hire, Katie Schum- acher-Cawley, who will succeed Rose with the women's volleyball program. Men's soccer and women's ice hockey have been surging in recent years, with Cook's squad winning the Big Ten Tour- nament and regular-season champion- ships this past season. But of Penn State's 31 varsity pro- grams, football garners by far the most attention, and it's where the teamwork between the administration and coach- ing staff is most visible. Franklin said he felt as though he had a good partnership with Barron and Barbour. "I thought we worked extremely, ex- tremely well together," he said. Soon, though, he'll be the only one of those three left, and he'll be looking to find the kind of alignment that he has often touted as a necessary precursor to on-field success, especially in the era of name, image and likeness marketing and immediate eligibility for transfers. "Having two significant positions on a college campus, the president and the athletic director, [changing hands soon means that] building those rela- tionships and that rapport is critical," Franklin said, "as well as with the chair of the board of trustees, Matt Schuyler. All those positions are really important. "I'm excited right now in how those things are going. But obviously, this athletic director hire is going to be criti- cal for the university as a whole, for the athletic department, and then specifi- cally for the football program. They're very, very important hires, and it's very important that we build strong rela- tionships so I can do a great job of build- ing the football program in the vision that they expect it to be run." So m e n a m e s h ave a l rea dy b e e n floated as potential successors. Sean Frazier is currently the athletics direc- tor at Northern Illinois, and he has Big Ten experience, too, having spent six years as one of Barry Alvarez's deputies at Wisconsin. Boston College's Patrick Kraft and Army's Mike Buddie both have experi- ence with major facilities projects of the sort that Penn State would like to build in the coming years. Jamie Pollard has presided over football and basketball revivals at Iowa State. Barbour, meanwhile, won't be look- ing to move on to another school. At least not as an athletics director. When she signed a contract extension in 2019, Barbour said that the Penn State job would be her last as an AD, and she's holding to that vow. She said she plans to take some time off when she steps down and will continue to reside in the State College area for the next year or so. After that, she plans to head back West, where much of her family lives. Barbour, 62, said she would like to get back into teaching, which she did at several of her previous stops as an ad- ministrator and, before that, as a coach. "Other than that, I have no idea," she said. "I want to take some time and just do some things at my own pace, and then I'll figure it out." Barbour said that after she steps down, she wants to have an opportu- nity to savor her time in Happy Valley, knowing that there's much she will miss when she does finally leave. "I love this place," she said. "It's really special, and it's because of the people, it's because of the values, it's because of the character, it's because of the prior- ity that we place on education. Yeah, we want to win, and we think we can win at everything we do. But we're not going to sacrifice the values, the character, the education piece. "It's really been a privilege. For me to have the opportunity to cap off my career as an athletic director and for this to be the ultimate spot, I'm really, really fortunate. "What I'll miss are the people. That's part of the reason I'm staying for some time. I want to have an opportunity to spend some time with people — not necessarily just for proper goodbyes, but to enjoy. "I'll miss 107,000 in Beaver Stadium. I'll miss a raucous Rec Hall, or the BJC when it's got the right amount of people in it rocking and rolling for wrestling or for either of our basketball teams. "I'll miss student-athletes. … The messages that I've gotten from cur- rent student-athletes and recent Penn State graduates thanking me for things I didn't even know I did, the ways I had an impact on them that I didn't know necessarily — that I'll miss. And frankly, that's why we in this business do it. It's to impact them and help set them up for success. I'll miss those opportuni- ties." ■ S A N D Y B A R B O U R B Y T H E N U M B E R S 5 Top-20 finishes in the Director's Cup during her tenure 7 National championships (5 wrestling, 1 women's volleyball, 1 women's soccer) 3 1 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans 3 4 Individual national champions 3 9 Conference championships (31 Big Ten, 7 EIVA, 1 CHA) 92 % Graduation Success Rate achieved by PSU student-athletes in 2021, a school record 78 1 Big Ten Distinguished Scholars 1 ,0 9 8 Student-athletes earned their degrees while Barbour was athletics director 2 , 5 3 0 Academic All-Big Ten selections