The college has added a women’s swimming team and men’s and women’s cross country teams to compete in the NCAA Division III and the Old Dominion Athletic Conference (ODAC). The men’s tennis team will also be returning for the first time since the 2002 season.
Sports Information Director Dave Walters attributed the men’s tennis team’s departure to a “lack of interest,” but also said the team was dropped in an effort to have an equal number of male and female sports teams at the college in compliance with Title IX requirements.
Athletic Director Marion Kirby said the return of men’s tennis and the addition of cross country and swimming was “simply an attempt to try to catch up to schools we compete with athletically, schools we compete with scholastically.”
Previously, the college had the fewest sports teams of any coed ODAC school.
Kirby also praised the college for having had a successful men’s tennis program in the past, and said he thought that “if there was interest, and we had courts, (the program) wouldn’t be so difficult to reinstate.” According to Kirby, function followed form: already existing facilities were a motivation to introduce cross country and swimming programs to the college. “Although we have a somewhat rudimentary (cross country) course, it’s still here,” he said.
In recent years, students had rarely used the pool, which was managed by a YMCA branch that operated from the Ragan-Brown field house until moving into a new facility off-campus. “It was either fill (the pool) up with dirt, or see if we could use it,” Kirby said, noting that ODAC already had a swimming league in place. “We have a pool, why not try to have a swim team?”
New women’s swimming coach Steve Kaczmarek was hired after the college conducted a national search for a part-time coach. Kaczmarek has a history of developing strong swimming programs, according to the athletic department’s website.
After graduating from Texas Tech University in 1975, he began serving as the aquatics director for Plains High School in Plains, Texas, in 1976, establishing a program 60 swimmers strong. In 1984, he began coaching in the Corpus Christi Independent School District (CCISD) in Texas with a team of seven swimmers. Under his guidance, the district’s program grew to include 150 swimmers and head coaches for the five high schools in the district.
Most recently, Kaczmarek was the natatorium supervisor and aquatic director for CCISD from 2000 – 04 and oversaw the addition of a competitive middle school swimming program.
Kaczmarek begins this season with a roster of 23 swimmers whom he recruited while still living in Texas.
Assistant men’s basketball coach Tim Kaine was initially planned to coach the men’s and women’s cross country teams. Kaine, however, accepted an offer to coach at Newberry College in South Carolina, and assistant women’s basketball coach Scott Smith stepped in Aug. 13 to take his place.
Smith, who has a master’s degree in sports management and athletic administration from Indiana University, has extensive coaching experience, including three years as head coach for the girls’ basketball squad at Holy Cross High School in Louisville, Ky., and one year as assistant women’s basketball coach for the college.
This season, however, marks his first foray into the world of cross country. “I’m going to try to absorb as much as I can,” Smith said, noting that he would also use his father, who coached cross country at St. Joseph’s College in Indiana, as a resource.
Smith is not the only coach who will be in charge of more than one organization this year. Tom Palombo, who was hired in July 2003 as the head men’s basketball coach, was also intended to be the men’s tennis coach until he accepted the position of director of the Quaker Club, the college’s athletic booster organization.
William Fickes, another assistant men’s basketball coach, stepped up to coach the men’s tennis team, which currently has six members on its roster. According to Walters, it is not an uncommon practice for ODAC schools to have two part-time positions held by one person. “It’s a lot cheaper to hire one person to do two jobs,” he said. “Many of the recent additions to the athletics staff have come with multiple responsibilities … if you’re a full-time person, you have multiple responsibilities.”
There are still open spots on the swimming, tennis, and cross country rosters. “If there are students who are interested in participating, I would recommend they contact the head coach,” Walters said. “These new sports represent new opportunities.”
The men’s and women’s cross country teams will kick off their seasons at the Washington and Lee Invitational Sept. 11. The women’s swimming team will have its first meet Oct. 30 at Emory and Henry College in Emory, Va. The men’s tennis team won’t see competition until March 4 at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Va.