Southeast athletics faces multitude of recommendations

A review of Southeast Missouri State athletics concluded that the department needs a plan.

It also recommended adding several positions to help implement one.

Presentations on the report will be made twice today -- first at a meeting of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee then in the afternoon for the Board of Regents.

"It is going to be an opportunity for people to find out what the consultants' observations and expectations are," Southeast athletic director Don Kaverman said. "We're hopeful the report -- a lot of time and effort was spent on this study -- will result in improvements in our program."

The 148-page document was prepared by Florida-based Carr Sports Associates this year after athletics was identified as one of the urgent areas to be addressed by the Board of Regents during the university's strategic planning initiative. Carr Sports Associates received $45,000 to conduct the review.

Bill Carr and Gerald O'Dell made visits to Cape Girardeau in January and March to tour facilities and conduct several interviews. Lamar Daniel made a campus visit in February to conduct interviews for the portion on Title IX, which is the largest part of the report at 39 pages.

The Title IX recommendations include two additional assistant coaching positions in any two of four women's sports -- soccer, softball, gymnastics or volleyball -- and also an increase in pay for the third women's basketball assistant to fall in line with the men's third assistant.

In addition, suggestions to improve Southeast's Title IX compliance include increased budgets for the women's teams so that 51 percent of the women athletes have all the equipment and supplies necessary. "In addition, the softball team should be provided everything but their own fielding gloves," the report recommends. Currently, only the members of the women's basketball team, representing 9.3 percent of the school's female athletes, receive all their necessary equipment and supplies.

On top of that, the report recommends increasing participation in several sports to bring the percentage of athletes that are women (41.1) more in line with the percentage of the student population (55.4). The difference in the numbers of athletes -- 216 men and 151 women -- is related to football, since Southeast offers nine sports for women and six for men.

Nonetheless, the report said:

• More track athletes should be encouraged to join cross country to increase the female participation numbers.
• Southeast should conduct online surveys to gauge the interest for another women's sport.
• Additional games should be scheduled to bring sports such as gymnastics and women's tennis to the maximum.
• Women's soccer should travel by bus more often, if not every time. (All the men's sports teams travel by air or bus; 45 percent of the travel by women's teams was in vans.)
• Women athletes experienced overcrowding and shared beds on road trips, whereas the men did not.

"I wasn't too surprised by their findings," Kaverman said. "I don't believe what they suggested is overwhelming. The bottom line is they didn't suggest we need to add another sport. You're basically looking at making some adjustments to operating budgets and recruiting and adding some personnel."

The review cited a 2007 report that showed Southeast spent $149,875 for recruiting in men's sports and $29,908 for women's sports.

Kaverman said that discrepancy may be a product of the process, in which coaches are given lump sums to handle costs of traveling and equipment as well as recruiting.

"We let them determine how that money is allocated in their programs," Kaverman said. "Their needs change from year to year, and we don't micromanage our coaches.

"Certainly, the men do spend more. Football skews it because of the number of scholarships they have to award every year."

The review also recommended some changes in fund-raising, noting that the university's efforts have become too sport specific. The review said the fund-raising practices led to "donor confusion and fatigue."

"We're not doing that because that's the way we would choose to raise money in the best of all possible worlds," Kaverman said. "We only have one dedicated development person in athletics. Clearly, we can't generate the amount of private support we need with only one fundraiser out there. We rely on our boosters, our booster board and we rely on our coaches. Some of our coaches are very effective at fundraising."

The review recommends an administrative assistant for development, one of seven additional personnel additions on top of the two women's assistant coaches. "These positions are vital to generating additional revenue and enhancing student-athlete welfare," the review said.

The report also recommends restructuring the department with two associate ADs -- one for internal affairs and one for external affairs -- to reduce the number of people reporting directly to Kaverman. Currently, the lone associate AD, Cindy Gannon, also is called senior women's administrator and also has teaching responsibilities, which the review recommends be dropped from her duties.

"They think we're a little too vertically organized," Kaverman said, "and that limits my ability to do other things, primarily be outside the university and in the community more. It would free me up to do what Division I athletic directors typically do, which is raise money for the athletic programs."

Board of Regents member Jim Limbaugh had said the department lacked direction, which was a factor in making athletics a strategic planning priority. The review agreed, saying the department lacked "a vision statement" that would unify supporters, needed better business planning, and needed a strategic plan with long-term as well as annual goals.