Fran Reidy doesn’t play baseball for Saint Leo University. He doesn’t shoot a basketball. He’s not on a swimming relay team. And he’s not a threat running track.
Still, he’s a critical part of the university’s athletic success.
As athletics director, he’s responsible for all of those sports and more. There are 19 in all, and it’s his job to see them grow and prosper.
Clearly, he’s doing something right.
(Courtesy of Saint Leo University)
Reidy has been named the Under Armour Division II Athletics Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics. He will be honored at an awards luncheon next month in Orlando.
This is the second time that Reidy has earned the designation. He also achieved it in 2012.
“I feel good about it,” Reidy said via phone from North Carolina, where he was cheering on the Lions at the NCAA Championship for men’s golf last week. “I think it’s a sign of the great things that Saint Leo has been accomplishing, and I get recognized for what our teams have been doing.”
Saint Leo is currently ninth in the Division II Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup standings, a competition that measures a school’s overall athletic success across all sports.
The Lions have never finished better than 18th in the competition, and have placed lower than that in many years. But they’re now in the top 10 after the winter season.
Part of that success stems from being involved in more sports. When Reidy first came on board as the men’s soccer coach 28 years ago, the Lions participated in just eight sports. By the time he became athletics director 16 years ago, they inched up to 10. Now they’ve nearly doubled that number, and can claim success in many of those programs.
Doing well on many fields is important to Reidy. He doesn’t want Saint Leo to be known for just one or two sports, with the rest treated as an afterthought.
“A lot of schools to tend to tier their sports and push the majority of the resources toward certain sports, and we have resisted that temptation,” he explained. “We want all of our student-athletes to have a championship experience.”
Reidy and his staff have worked to equip their teams with the resources to provide those quality experiences. That means new facilities for sports like soccer, softball and lacrosse, and more full-time assistants for coaches.
As recently as five years ago, only the baseball program had full-time assistant coaches. To beef that number up, the university has invested around $250,000 in assistant salaries, Reidy said, and now a dozen sports have them.
“That’s been an area of focus. We needed those extra positions to help recruit, to help academically and keep our teams successful,” he said.
The investment appears to be paying off.
In the past three years, Saint Leo has earned three titles in the Sunshine State Conference, which is known to be a competitive collection of schools. That success continues a trend over the past decade, during which time the Lions have won a dozen conference regular season and tournament titles. They’ve also claimed the SSC Mayor’s Cup, which measures overall conference success, in both 2012-13 and 2013-14.
Saint Leo’s athletes are accomplished in the classroom, as well.
The university has approximately 375 athletes, and their grade point average reached an all-time high this past semester with a 3.22 mark. To achieve an academic record at the same time they’re achieving great things on the fields of play is a source of pride for Reidy.
Now that the school has reached new heights, the real challenge is staying at that level. It can be harder to maintain success than it is to achieve it, Reidy said.
To continue progressing, they have specific goals and constantly evaluate how they’re doing and what can be improved, he said.
For now, the near future includes keeping their existing sports operating at a high level. As far as adding sports, Reidy said women’s rowing and wrestling would top his list.
He understands that football would be a popular choice for many fans, but he needs to know more about the long-term effects of concussions, and the legal ramifications of those effects, before giving it serious consideration.
In any case, adding new sports isn’t a near-term priority.
Instead, Reidy would like to see a top-10 finish in the Directors’ Cup and perhaps the university’s first-ever national championship.
And he doesn’t want to accomplish those goals by micro-managing his team. Instead, he’ll rely on five assistant athletics directors and the coaching staffs for each sport to keep the university on track and moving forward in athletics.
“I think from a staff standpoint, you try to do it all on the front end,” Reidy said. “You try to hire the right people, and then just give them the right resources and stay out of the way.”
Published May 27, 2015
