In his first year as president of Alderson-Broaddus College, Rick Creehan is overseeing a transformation of the Philippi, W.Va., campus through the expansion of the school's athletics program. Football, men's and women's lacrosse, women's tennis and men's volleyball will begin play in 2012, and the college intends to add a marching band, a color guard, and cheerleading and dance programs in 2013. Groundbreaking on a new outdoor multisport complex will take place in April, although Creehan says that, as of now, the college has only raised enough money to pay for the turf and lights.
It's the same formula that Creehan followed at Adrian College as executive vice president, working under Jeffrey Docking, that school's like-minded president. Adrian doubled its enrollment and operating budget in six years through the construction of sports and recreation facilities - the two men had similar successes earlier at Washington & Jefferson College - and now Docking is moving on to an expansion of the academic program at Adrian while his former colleague toils at the obscure and unheralded A-B.
"Starting from scratch is tough," Creehan says. "You have no history, no heritage, no tradition. There's just nothing in place. I think it's probably easier to have an established program, even if it was a bad one."
Adrian's athletics program was a bad one, and Docking and Creehan faced a fair amount of skepticism that sports could be the school's savior. Docking says, "I said to the faculty, 'Look, we're going to be putting a lot of money into sports and co-curriculars, and it's going to appear to you that academics doesn't matter. It does matter, but first you've got to let me grow enrollment.' "
Docking came to an Adrian College boasting - if that is the word - an enrollment of 840. Now, 60 percent of the student body of 1,670 is involved in the school's resurgent athletics program.
"We don't try to hide it; we don't apologize for it," Docking says. "We believe in sports, we believe sports is a great way to grow character. Their academic commitments come first, but we don't apologize for wanting to win, either. We tell the kids, 'Second place in the race for a job someday is not going to cut it.' There are all these ancillary benefits to bringing in athletes, because when they do start competing for jobs, they're competitive people, and they can get in the ring and throw punches, and they don't crumble under pressure. And if you read what CEOs want right now, number one on the list year after year is they want their people to be able to work within teams. Who knows better about working as part of a team than kids who have been on teams in college?"
The benefits to Adrian College have been enormous. The operating budget has reached $55 million and fundraising has exploded, a trend capped in December by the single largest gift ($20 million) in the school's history. U.S. News & World Report ranked Adrian as a Regional Top Baccalaureate College in the Midwest in its 2012 edition of America's Best Colleges, the fourth consecutive edition to honor the school (in 2009 and again in 2010, Adrian was named the "#1 Up-and-Coming School in the Midwest"). And Adrian's second major capital campaign, "Renaissance II," is under way, targeting academic programs (plans for adding a symphony are being drawn up) and facilities, including renovations and expansions of buildings devoted to the science, business and visual arts departments, and construction and/or renovation of space devoted to the performing arts. A new music building opened in August 2010.
"None of that would have been possible without this leveraging of sports and co-curriculars," Docking says.
For more about how Allegheny College, W&J and Adrian College leveraged sports and recreation to grow enrollment, and how Alderson-Broaddus plans to do the same, look for the cover story in the February issue of Athletic Business.
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