Vol. 24., No. 11	December 23, 1998

Athletics Is Building a Proud House: From Doormat to Ivy Contender

By A. Dunlap-Smith

In this era of increasing competition for the best students, Newsweek declared last spring, "Among the Ivies Columbia is the winner!" Indeed, having surpassed Yale a couple of years ago, the school now vies with only Princeton and Harvard for bragging rights to Most Selective College.

While its excellent academic reputation coupled with the revitalization of New York City are credited with Columbia's growing popularity, the story of its concurrent appeal to student-athletes has an extra element. Almost a decade ago, according to Provost Jonathan R. Cole, the University's administration adopted a new philosophy: "That Columbia deserves an athletic department equal to its great reputation."

After decades during which losing, particularly in the marquee sport of football, was not just accepted but vaunted by some, this change was nothing short of revolutionary.

Now, some 10 years into the revolution, and with the added commitment of George Rupp, who became president in 1993, Columbia athletics are showing improved results: This fall the established varsity teams-football, men's and women's soccer, men's and women's cross-country-collectively averaged more wins than losses against their Ivy competition, continuing an upward trend; the '96 football team grabbed national headlines with an 8-2 season and sent a player to the NFL; the women's soccer team this year earned the top berth in the ECAC post-season tournament; College senior Mike Grant was the first Columbian to win the Heptagonal Championships (the Ivy League plus Navy) in the 58-year-history of the race, and Olympic gold medalist Cristina Teuscher joined the swim team two years ago, smashing records not only at Columbia but in the NCAA as well.

Resolution on a Raft

The guy laughed, and it stung. That was in 1989, when Cole, Columbia's newly-appointed provost, was on a white-water rafting vacation in the wilds of Idaho. In a conversation with another member of the party, Cole recalled that "I mentioned I worked at Columbia, and he howled and said 'Oh, I've heard of it; that's the place with the longest losing streak in college football!'

"Right then I told myself 'This has got to stop'."

The this that Cole vowed to stop was more than the football team's losing streak; that, in fact, had ended the previous fall when the Lions beat the Princeton Tigers. No, Cole, a former Columbia baseball and basketball player, wanted somehow to put an end to an intangible yet tenacious thing: Columbia's losing reputation.

He began by hiring a new athletic director, John Reeves, and drawing up a master plan for a general upgrade of the sports facilities. "The imperative was to place athletics at a level of quality commensurate with a great university," Cole said, "so scholar-athletes as well as scholars felt they were valued members of the Columbia community."

Throwing Off the Yoke

Said Reeves of his first impression upon arriving at Columbia nine years ago: "It was as if the school forgot for awhile that it's here to educate the whole man and woman; as if having championship teams somehow compromised Columbia's intellectual integrity-well, Princeton and Harvard win championships and God knows they have intellectual integrity."

Reeves attacked the revamping of his athletic department on several fronts simultaneously. He set in motion the facilities master plan; he added coaches to the staff, and he imposed a degree of fiscal and professional stability Columbia athletics had not enjoyed for many years.

With renovations to the Dodge Physical Fitness Center as well as improvements made at Baker Field, Reeves got facilities that were appealing not only to student-athletes but to the University community too.

Through summer sport camps Reeves generated revenue that helped lift the yoke of a nearly half-million-dollar operating debt from the athletic department's neck last year. Moreover, communications and development efforts were stepped up, yielding an approximately 30 percent jump in gift income to the department.

"Without the deficit we can focus on what we need to do to stay competitive," Reeves said, "like attracting the best young coaches who are capable of recruiting and teaching the best student-athletes." Excepting veteran men's soccer coach Dieter Ficken, the other five head coaches of the fall varsity teams are products of Reeves' administration.

A Place to Study-and Compete

Columbia's new-found ability to recruit has already borne fruit. This year's class of 212 student-athletes, for example, is the second largest in the school's history, behind the recruits who arrived in 1995-today's seniors who are largely responsible for the Lions' recent achievements. Administrators agree, though, that the athletes who arrived in 1998 rank first in quality, both athletically and academically.

"The talent has steadily improved since my first year here," said Jim Armstrong, a College senior from North Carolina and a starting defensive tackle on the football team. Asked what it was that attracted him to Columbia and away from Dartmouth and Harvard where he was also recruited, he said: "I thought the academics were as good here as at those places, and the athletic facilities as good or better-but what really impressed me were the Columbia coaches I met; they had the most optimistic, positive attitude about their program."

Fourth-year women's soccer coach Kevin McCarthy (CC'85, GSAS'90) has built his program from a perennial doormat into an Ivy contender. The product of champion Lion soccer teams from the mid-'80s, McCarthy speaks to his recruits with infectious enthusiasm about Columbia. "I tell them how this school was one of the greatest gifts given to me," McCarthy said, "because anything I wanted to do-and they want to do-can be done here. That's unique to Columbia."

His message is finding a receptive audience. The year before McCarthy took over the squad, not a single recruiting battle with an Ivy competitor was won by Columbia; today, half of McCarthy's players turned down one or more schools in the League to come to Morningside Heights.

Reeves and his staff also built a more efficient working relationship with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid. "In the past a coach might have had to recruit the same kid three or four times-right into August-because the financial aid package would keep changing," Reeves said. "That uncertainty really hurt us, but now a recruit's aid package is clear by the spring."

A Sense of Empowerment

Renovated facilities and an enthusiastic, young staff have contributed greatly to improving how Columbia athletics is perceived outside College Walk, but what coaches and administrators say makes as big a difference is the perception of the program by those inside the school gates.

"People at Columbia are very respectful of student-athletes," Liz Griffith, a College sophomore on the women's varsity crew, said. "I feel empowered being on a team here."

That was not the feeling many athletes got at Columbia not so long ago. "My players wouldn't wear their team gear to class because they felt they were looked down on by the other students," said Brian Bodine, assistant director of athletics for development and communications, remembering a campus almost hostile to student-athletes when he came to Columbia as a freshman football coach in the early '90s. "By December of my first season here, my four best players quit. It was too tough to play against another team on the weekend and against your peers all week."

Significantly-and surprisingly in light of the Columbia student body's reputation for indifference to its teams was this vexed and peremptory headline in the Columbia Daily Spectator after a humiliating loss, 37-14, to last season's Ivy cellar-dweller Yale: "Season Can (and Must) Be Salvaged."

The faculty have also shown renewed support for Columbia athletics. "Professors have become good about meeting recruits-heck, Columbia's top administrators have spoken with recruits-and about letting them visit their classes," Jacqueline Blackett, associate director of athletics for compliance and student affairs, said; "and we've had professors come speak to teams about grades and handling the academic work load here."

Last year Blackett, with support from the President's Advisory Committee for Intercollegiate Athletics headed by Professor Paul Anderer, started a program that matched faculty members with Columbia teams as academic advisors and liaisons. A couple of professors took their roles seriously enough to join a soccer practice and to sit on the bench during a basketball game.

Though proud of the progress Columbia athletics has made, Reeves cautions it has only allowed the school "finally to sit at the table with its Ivy colleagues." But the staff in Dodge Fitness Center appear determined to continue this upward trend. When asked whether he has much more to achieve after his recent successes, McCarthy seemed to speak for Columbia's entire sports program: "The day we stop thinking we have a lot of work to do is the day we begin a downward spiral."