National Collegiate Athletic Association
NCAA News Archive - 2000
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The NCAA News
ORLANDO, Florida -- How does one effect change?
For many of the NCAA Foundation Leadership Conference participants, it starts with a vision: building a campus recreation center; mentoring children, improving athletics department communications or building support for student-athletes. It takes commitment, sacrifice and perseverance. Ultimately, it results in a sense of accomplishment, and perhaps, the knowledge that something is infinitely better because of those efforts.
Four student-athletes, all members of the gray color team and none from the same school, brought ideas for change to the conference with hopes of receiving the knowledge and tools to make those ideas reality. They agreed to talk about their projects and share the ways in which the projects took shape.
Leslie Bagay
WELLESLEY COLLEGE
At a Division III campus where the overriding emphasis is success in academics first, creating enthusiasm among the student body for school athletics events might seem daunting, if not impossible.
Leslie Bagay, a member of the Wellesley field hockey team, said, "My campus is extremely academically oriented. People tend to be very focused on what they're doing in order to achieve good grades. Attending a school athletics event doesn't benefit them in achieving that."
Bagay said she came to the conference with a broad plan of somehow increasing the communication between student-athletes and the student body so that student-athletes are more visible.
"What I hope to learn here is how other student-athletes get students to their games," she said.
Bagay cited interactions with other student-athletes and administrators as the breeding ground for ideas that could help her.
"Previously, I didn't know where to go with my project and now, through the sessions, it's given me a more concrete path and more confidence to know I can do it," Bagay said.
She also said her project is expanding. Bagay said she plans to look toward community outreach as a way to incorporate all of her initiatives.
"Not only would doing community service increase publicity for my school and raise awareness among the students, but it would give the student-athletes a way to be fulfilled. It'll just help everyone," she said.
In addition to the community-outreach approach, Bagay pointed to other suggestions passed along to her that would help her raise interest in Wellesley athletics. "I like the idea of a 'Meet the Student-Athletes Day' and the concept of the punch pass where students can attend an athletics event, get their pass punched and be entered into a drawing," she said.
And if there's anything she could take away from the conference to help her back at school, Bagay said, "it's that my first steps will be a lot of little ones."
Dauntae Finger
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, CHAPEL HILL
In his last year at North Carolina, Dauntae Finger expects to have a successful senior effort wearing his No. 83 football jersey. He expects to complete his communication studies degree. And all the while, he expects to launch a peer-mentoring program for area youth.
"I did a report in class about youth, particularly in the Raleigh-Durham area, and I learned that violent acts are occurring with increased frequency among kids between the ages of 14 and 16," Finger said. "My conclusion was that they need mentoring."
Finger said he envisions a mentoring program that involves North Carolina student-athletes of all races participating as mentors.
But there's just one problem. "The student-athletes won't follow through, so I'm trying to find ways to motivate them," he said.
Building on the ideas and experiences of those around him at the conference, Finger said he learned that, sometimes, asking for help is a necessity.
"I need to talk to the athletics director and the coaches to ask them to ask the student-athletes for help," Finger said.
With that part taken care of, Finger can then visit area youth centers and schools to find kids most in need of mentoring. "If I get the help I need, even though I'm in season, I would hope that by December, I'll have it under control," he said.
Wayne Stickney-Smith
LONG BEACH STATE UNIVERSITY
Sometimes change starts with simple motives. For Wayne Stickney-Smith, his actions, he said, were sparked by the fact that "People like to complain a lot and I can't tolerate that."
A cross country runner for Long Beach State, Stickney-Smith came to the conference having already bettered his institution and with plans to do more.
For almost two months this past spring, he traded his running shoes to help pass a $1.2 million voter referendum for his school called "Beach Pride." That meant hours of research, lobbying sponsors and rallying fellow students to adopt legislation that would fully fund scholarships for Long Beach State athletes, increase operational budgets and improve facilities, and assist groups on the periphery such as the band, spirit squad and club sports.
"I saw my teammates underfunded. I figured this could help," Stickney-Smith said.
Beach Pride's success depended on whether students could be convinced to approve a student fee increase. Through a well-orchestrated marketing campaign developed by Stickney-Smith and key student and university administrators, the initiative gained more than 63 percent of the vote.
And now, Long Beach State will have a brand new student recreation center if Stickney-Smith has anything to say about it, which he does.
"We've been doing a lot of research, looking at other universities that have had recreation centers built. And we're looking to increase the student fee to cover the cost," he said.
For Stickney-Smith, he said the conference enforces what he already has come to realize on his own, "To get change you have to be effective with everybody."
That notion will prove useful when Stickney-Smith executes the marketing side of the recreation center effort. Trying to convince college coeds to part with even more money can be tricky business.
Stickney-Smith said he will not be deterred. "You can't be afraid to think bigger," he said. "You might as well go to Mt. Everest and do your best. If you're going to settle for mediocrity, then you'll just be mediocre.
Kizzy Lopez
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE, ORONO
A light of recognition flickers in Kizzy Lopez's eyes and she furiously scribbles in her notebook. She is recording ideas and words of advice being directed at her from student-athletes, coaches and athletics directors seated around her.
For Lopez, her path to the improved relations she envisions for Maine's athletics department began with a few simple questions: "How do you deal with your student-athletes? Do you always let them know what's going on?"
On the receiving end of that inquiry was Jeffrey Eisen, the athletics director at St. Francis College (Pennsylvania).
"Well we try to. We start at the beginning of the year by meeting with each of the teams," Eisen said.
Fairfield University women's basketball coach Dianne Nolan said, "We meet in the campus chapel at the beginning of the school year. Every student-athlete and coach is there and we introduce each athlete and his or her home town."
The dialogue begins and Lopez follows her first questions with more.
She said, "Who do I talk to if I'm having problems with my coach? How do I go about talking to people in the athletics department about others in the department?"
Lopez's attendance at the negotiation session was based on what she said is a growing feeling among student-athletes at her school that "their needs aren't being met."
She said the source of that is the lack of adequate communication between athletics department personnel and the student-athletes, as well as among the student-athletes themselves.
"I think often times (the athletics department) does what's best for the program, not the student-athletes. There's no communication," she said.
"I need to know how to go about improving on that and who to get on my side," she said.
Lopez said the negotiation session with Division I administrators gave her the first inklings of how to achieve her goal.
"It was interesting to hear that if you're dissatisfied you can go to the next step and if you don't find answers there, maybe you should try someone else," she said. "It helped me realize other ways to go about solving the problems I see."