As you prepare for another new school year, what's the biggest challenge on your plate? The answer is different for everyone, as different as the strategies you'll call upon to face whatever is in front of you. Maybe your challenge is something completely new. Maybe it's last year's challenge all over again but you're taking a new approach. Maybe you're not yet even sure what it is.

In this article, we profile five athletic directors who are facing unique situations or obstacles. One is attempting to rescue a department's tarnished image, another is coping with a drastically different league structure, and a third is going to court against a former employer. In New Orleans, an athletic director is attempting to attract athletes to a city rocked by one of the nation's worst natural disasters, while a colleague on the other side of the country looks to lead a lackluster program to new heights.

Although their stories are diverse, the common thread is one all athletic directors can understand. As a new school year begins, there's always a challenge on the horizon.

CLEAN SLATE
The past few years have been difficult for the athletic department at Barton County Community College. In 2005, after months of investigation, federal fraud and embezzlement charges were brought against eight coaches at the Great Bend, Kan., school. The coaches were accused of helping athletes falsify work-study timecards to receive paychecks without doing work, and in one instance, a coach even completed academic work for athletes to keep them on pace for associate's degrees. The scandal led to the firing of the college's president, sanctions from the National Junior College Athletic Association, and the kind of black eye that's difficult for an athletic program to bounce back from.

Looking for a fresh start, in April the school made Head Women's Volleyball Coach Kurt Kohler its new athletic director. Today, Kohler is exploring ways to move forward and mend fences—within his department, with faculty and administrators, and most importantly, with the community at large.

"Any time you're involved in a situation like we've been dealing with, it can absolutely tear a school apart," Kohler says. "But I also see it as an opportunity to build new and better relationships. We've got outstanding academic departments here, and Great Bend is a wonderful community with lots of people who care about athletics. We've got some work to do to restore our reputation and show everyone that we're committed to earning their support, and that's a challenge we're facing head-on this year."

For Kohler, job one is setting a new standard for communication. It's partially an informal effort, simply making it a priority to frequently check in with coaches so that everyone is on the same page throughout the year. But he's also instituting more formal oversight by ramping up the frequency of department-wide and one-on-one meetings with coaches, especially during their sport season.

"We realize now that a major source of our problems was a lack of openness between coaches and administration," says Kohler, who stepped down as volleyball coach when he was named athletic director. "My job is to identify the challenges coaches are facing and be there to help solve problems and keep our programs moving in the right direction."

Kohler is looking to build new bridges outside the department as well, starting with the college faculty. He took a shoe-leather approach this summer, going around campus to meet individually and in groups with faculty to explain changes in the athletic department and show how past mistakes are being corrected.

"Selling the idea that it's a new day for athletics takes real effort, because faculty members know how the athletic department has tarnished the school's reputation in recent years," Kohler says. "But by looking people in the eye and showing them we're serious about a new direction, I'm getting our message across. I've made it clear that I want their input in new policies that make academics our top priority, and that's helped them realize that we share the same goals for the college."

Most importantly, though, Kohler has been reaching out to the local community. Game attendance, season-ticket sales, and booster club fundraising all took a hit as a result of the scandal, so a major part of his job this year is bringing fans—and the revenue that follows—back into the fold.

"We rely on the support of people in our area, and we're helped out through their tax dollars, so we understand that public perception of our programs is a huge deal," Kohler explains. "The great thing is, we've got a lot of high quality individuals on our teams, and when people see that, it completely changes any negative feelings they might have about us. One of our goals this year is to get our kids out into the community and show everyone who they are.

"This fall, we're creating a program for student-athletes to go into local elementary schools and read to the kids and do some tutoring," he continues. "We also want to do a lot more youth camps in the area and find other service projects to get involved in. Those opportunities are always around—it's just a matter of finding them and putting our kids out there."

As Kohler prepares for a year of building bridges, he's confident these efforts, and the new direction they represent for his department, will make all the difference. "We have a lot to be proud of here at Barton," he says. "By doing things right within our programs and making our presence felt in the community, people are going to see what we're really about."

AFTER THE STORM
It's a bit strange to hear an administrator in New Orleans describe his school as having been lucky last year, but in the case of Loyola University Athletic Director Michael Giorlando, the shoe fits. When Hurricane Katrina and its subsequent flooding devastated the city, the water more or less stopped at Loyola's doorstep, in the famous Uptown section of New Orleans. Some facility roofs needed repair and water got into some buildings, but the campus was largely spared major damage.

Despite this good fortune, Loyola's athletic department still has some serious work to do this year, and the most immediate challenge involves attracting athletes to the program. That's because, although 91 percent of the students and 93 percent of athletes were back by January, contact with prospective recruits was thrown into disarray by the hurricane.

"We had a major problem with mail," explains Giorlando, who was named Gulf Coast Athletic Conference Athletic Director of the Year in May, in part for his post-Katrina leadership. "Thousands of return envelopes that were being sent to Loyola—applications, letters, interest forms—never made it. The postal service was only delivering first-class mail, so all those business reply envelopes that should have been returned to us didn't arrive.

"We basically had to start recruiting all over again," he continues. "We lost a lot of legwork, and it took a ton of hard work from our people to make up for that."

Even before the hard work began, Giorlando and university administrators made one critical decision: Unless it was absolutely necessary, no sports would be cut. "We decided that in a situation like ours, athletic programs are really an extension of the admissions office—they help draw kids to the school," he says. "We're taking more walk-ons than we have in years past, just trying to get more people on board. And beyond the athletes themselves, our sports programs are helping to get people excited about coming back to Loyola."

When the whole world has witnessed the devastation of your city and all the struggles and suffering that followed, it seems like attracting recruits would be an uphill battle. But Giorlando—who is also Head Men's Basketball Coach—and the department's other coaches are using the disaster's aftermath as a selling point.

"We're really focusing on recruiting folks who want to be part of rebuilding our city," he says. "We talk a lot about that with recruits, and we are very honest with them. It's not going to be easy to be a New Orleanian for the next few years, and we articulate the challenge. We are finding athletes who want to be part of the history-making process of helping our city and our university get back to where it was.

"We tell recruits that we're doing community service every day," Giorlando continues. "We've got groups of kids going out to help different organizations do all sorts of things. Whether it's gutting houses, doing landscaping and painting, helping people move, working at a school or a rec center or nursing home, or just helping businesses reorganize their equipment and offices, our athletes will be out there getting things done. It's something our recruits see as an important value, which says something about the quality of the people we're bringing in. For them, it's really one of those experiences you can't put a price tag on."

CLASS DISRUPTION
An entire article could be devoted to the controversial reclassification conducted this year by the Oregon School Activities Association and the new league structures that resulted. And while South Eugene High School Athletic Director Dave Hancock could point to several faults in the new arrangement, he's much too busy these days to do so. Hancock is preparing his athletic department for a year that promises to be drastically different than any before.

South Eugene's difficulty with the changes can be summarized in three words: location, location, location. "Previously, we were in a league with the other high schools in Eugene and one that's on the coast, two hours away," Hancock explains. "Our new league has six schools—two of them are three hours away, one is just a little closer than that, and another is an hour away. Only two of us are in Eugene."

Ever since the league assignments were finalized this spring, Hancock has been hard at work finding ways to mitigate the problems created by his new far-flung league. Much of the focus has been on travel expenses.

"Our travel budget is increasing from $16,000 last year to around $60,000 this year, so needless to say, we're looking to cut some costs," Hancock says. "One thing I'm doing is getting creative with scheduling. I'm trying to double up our travel dates in some sports, by scheduling games with two different teams on the same day. When we drive three hours to Medford for volleyball, where two of our opponents are located, we'd like to play them both, and they can do the same thing when they come to Eugene.

"In cross country and track and field, we're looking at having three league-wide meets instead of a lot of dual meets, and then filling out our schedule with invitationals closer to home," he continues. "The average cost per trip is around $1,500, so eliminating some trips is a big help."

For now, South Eugene's school district has pledged a large budget increase to cover travel, but Hancock knows fundraising will be more important than ever in the new league. "I'm going to be out aggressively seeking new sponsors for things like stadium signage and other advertising this year," he says. "We're also hoping to expand our existing fundraisers, like the casino night we held last year—people played card games with fake money, then used it to bid on prizes at the end of the night. Hopefully, we can grow events like that and make them a stronger source of income."

Cost isn't the only concern Hancock is addressing. He's also trying to minimize the effect all the extra travel might have on athletes' academics. "This spring, we told our athletes, 'If you're playing sports next year, there's a good chance you'll be missing more afternoon classes.' We talked to them about trying to schedule their harder classes for the morning," he says. "I've also discussed with coaches the need to be lenient in letting kids miss practice if they need to catch up on homework. And we'll be keeping an extra close eye on grades during the year."

Hancock is doing all he can to lessen the impact that the games in places like Medford will have on his athletes. "We're using charter buses for the longer trips this year, which have lights above the seats so kids can study during the rides—we're stressing that every minute is valuable," he says. "It's actually a great lesson for the kids who want to play in college, because it will give them some sense for what it's like being a student-athlete at the next level."

Also important was explaining the new situation to athletes' parents. Hancock says parents came to him with concerns about everything from grades to travel expenses to late arrivals home on school nights, so he organized a special parents' meeting in the spring to answer questions and talk about how they could help their children adjust. Some parents even offered creative suggestions for the sport schedules.

South Eugene's athletic future remains uncertain, as the district has joined two others to challenge the reclassification in court. Even if that fails, Hancock and other athletic directors in Eugene will be compiling data this year on participation rates, academic performance, travel expenses, and other metrics that may show a negative impact of the new league.

"There are a lot of questions for us this year, and we don't really know what all the effects will be," says Hancock. "But we're trying to make the best of it, and we'll see what happens."

SPARTAN RENEWAL
Thursday the 13th of April was a bad day for Tom Bowen, Athletic Director at San Jose State University. The NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) scores had just been released, reflecting athletes' academic performance during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years, and he learned that his athletic department was being stripped of scholarships in football, baseball, soccer, and cross country.

Hired in December 2004, Bowen had been thrown into a gauntlet: He was charged with taking a Division I program that was struggling in many ways and turning it into a mid-major power. The APR news didn't come as a huge surprise, but it underscores the task in front of him.

From his first day on the job, Bowen has been formulating and advancing a full slate of initiatives aimed at fundamentally changing the culture of the program. He started by crafting a new mission statement that said the athletic department's goal was to give student-athletes the best opportunity to succeed, and that meant academics needed to be a top priority.

"I really believe that great, successful programs have great, successful scholar-athletes—they go hand in hand," Bowen says. "But it's a genuine culture change for us. It's about establishing a sense of accountability for the athletes, and saying, 'You're here to get an education and graduate from SJSU, and that's what we expect from you.'"

From there, he quickly got down to specifics. Bowen set some important new ground rules, including a GPA requirement tied to scholarship renewal, academic oversight policies that held athletes accountable for failing grades and incompletes, and a new process for athletes to register for classes each semester under the guidance of the athletic department's academic center.

In the second year under these new policies, he is already seeing results. "We've noticed tremendous changes already in how well our kids are doing academically," Bowen says. "We probably had the best eligibility percentage going into summer school that we've ever had, and that's a really encouraging sign for us."

Finances are another area Bowen is revamping. "One reason I was hired is my background in development and fundraising," he says. "And one big lesson I learned when I worked as a fundraising and community affairs executive for the San Francisco 49ers is the importance of seeking out corporate partnerships. When I arrived, we had just five corporate partners, and today we have more than 40."

A major step in that effort was taking control of Spartan Stadium, the school's 30,000-seat football facility, which had been owned by the university but run by an auxiliary organization for the previous 19 years. Now, everything from stadium signage to concessions is under the athletic department's purview, allowing Bowen and his staff to offer new marketing opportunities to corporate partners. "Taking over the stadium is a great challenge for us," Bowen says, "and it's opened up a lot of possibilities."

Tapping new revenue streams has also meant reforming the athletic department's capital giving, an ongoing effort that Bowen says will be a major priority in the coming year. "We're sitting on 94,000 alumni in the city of San Jose, and 175,000 in the Bay Area. We need to find more ways to get them involved in supporting athletics," he says.

One initiative, called Spartans Forever, is the athletic department's first legacy giving program, and it has already generated 45 planned gifts. Bowen has also assembled a committee of prominent donors and alumni to head a capital campaign that is targeting selected individuals for major gift solicitations. Broader solicitations for sport-specific gifts are being rolled out as well. The key to making these efforts successful, Bowen says, will be the diversity of giving opportunities available.

"We aren't trying to pigeonhole our donors by saying, 'This is our greatest need, so this is what we want you to support,'" he explains. "By reaching out to a lot of people and offering a lot of different ways to give to the program, we think we'll accomplish all our fundraising goals without putting too much pressure on our donor base."

In the coming year and beyond, Bowen expects all these efforts at renewal to have a snowball effect where success breeds success—better academics means better athletes, more financial resources improves all aspects of the department, enhanced community outreach gets more alumni and others excited about Spartan sports, and the end result is a higher-profile program with a winning tradition. "We really believe we're creating a new energy at San Jose State," Bowen says. "It might seem strange to think of winning as a byproduct, but that's our approach. If we do all these things right, I'm confident that success will come."

TAKING A STAND
As Athletic Director at Cornwall High School, a small school in Upstate New York, Lou Cioffi has the usual tasks on his to-do list this fall: getting eligibility forms in, helping coaches prepare for their seasons, fundraising, and so on. But he also faces another challenge—an ongoing lawsuit against his former employer, Averill Park (N.Y.) High School, where he was demoted after speaking out about a hazing incident.

Averill Park was rocked by scandal in 2001, when it was revealed that a freshman football player had been sexually assaulted in the locker room by a group of older teammates. The incident led to criminal charges against several athletes and the suspension of the school's football coaching staff, and the story lingered in the news for weeks as details of problems within the football program filtered out.

From the start, Cioffi wanted to be proactive in addressing the hazing situation and to keep parents and the public in the loop about what was happening. He had complained previously to the school board about the head football coach's failure to supervise athletes and felt his concerns were falling on deaf ears. After the hazing incident, he decided to go public.

"I eventually held a press conference to talk about the problems I was seeing, because I felt the public had a right to know what was transpiring," Cioffi says. "And I still believe that was the right thing to do."

Shortly thereafter, the school board voted to eliminate his athletic director position—in effect demoting him to social studies teacher for the following year. Now, Cioffi is suing his old district, claiming that it illegally acted in retaliation for his going public about problems in the football program, including the hazing. And, thanks to a U.S. Court of Appeals decision this spring that allowed the suit to proceed, he'll soon have his day in court.

For Cioffi, the lawsuit isn't just about personal vindication for having lost his job—more importantly, it's the principle at stake. "First and foremost, this lawsuit is about the right to speak up when you feel something isn't being done the right way," he says. "By publicly raising concerns the way I did, I was simply doing what I felt was appropriate. And if that kind of speech isn't protected, I'm afraid that in many instances people will be hesitant to do the same."

As his story received national attention, in part because of its free speech implications for school administrators, Cioffi says he was heartened to receive supportive phone calls from many athletic directors who felt he was taking a stand for everyone in the profession. "I heard from some of my colleagues at other schools who knew me well and fully understood the situation," he says. "But I also took calls from people outside this area, who had heard about what was happening and wanted to offer their support.

"As educators, coaches, and athletic directors, we've been trained to always focus on what's best for our students," he continues. "If we're presented with an opportunity to illustrate what that means by being honest and forthright in a situation like this, and we don't set that good example, we aren't doing any service to our profession."

Even with his suit pending, Cioffi isn't letting it weigh on him as he looks forward to a successful year at Cornwall. "The courts take a long time to do things, and that's all right," he says. "I'm very happy where I am now. I have a great relationship with our administration and our coaches, I'm in a wonderful community, and I feel very fortunate to be here."