Amid one of the most successful fall seasons in AU sports history, Athletic Director Keith Gill has seen significant growth in the athletic community and sees even more coming in the future.
During his tenure, Gill has seen the men’s basketball team go to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history and then repeat the feat the next year. On top of unprecedented basketball success, the university is poised to win as many as five Patriot League Championships in just one sporting season. Women’s field hockey, men’s soccer, women’s soccer, women’s volleyball and cross-country are all vying for Patriot League Championships in their respective sports.
“I would hesitate to say it is the most successful because we haven’t won anything,” Gill said of the fall athletic season. “We are certainly in a good position, and if everyone were to win that would be pretty sweet.”
While he could not point to any one thing that was behind the success, Gill did not take much personal credit. With athletes also having to meet AU academic requirements as well as athletic requirements, he said they end up with a group of dedicated individuals.
“I think we have a hard working group of coaching and players,” Gill said of the fall lineup. “It is there that it all really starts.”
AU attracts a very specific type of athlete, according to Gill. AU does not seek out athletes, because according to Gill, they find AU. The quality of education, as well as the relative success and setup of the department, is what attracts AU’s players, Gill said.
To add on to the academic success, Gill said he wants to increase the athletes’ overall GPA as well as their graduation rate. All athletic teams combined currently have a 3.3 GPA, and 89 percent of the athletes at AU eventually graduate. While both are above national averages, the graduation rate is a whole 17 percent higher.
“Our academic achievement has gone up from semester to semester thanks to the Office of Campus Life,” Gill said. “Athletes know when they come here that we expect them to graduate and contribute [academically].”
Despite the success and growth AU athletics has had, it is not the utopian department Gill would eventually like to achieve. He would like a better partnership with the university as a whole, getting the individual schools involved. His main initiative — on top of “winning a bunch of games” — is to increase school spirit.
“It takes time to [build spirit, and] we know Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Gill said. “We would love for the spirit to be so high here that if someone was wearing another [university’s] shirt they would get heckled beyond belief.”
There have been some small signs of increased spirit at AU. Attendance at events has doubled from where it was a few years ago, Gill said. The department knows that students have busy schedules, but AU Athletics is going to go to different means in order to keep the spirit growing.
While there may not be a lot of room in students’ schedules, the department does value its prominence at AU. The department generally understands that it is not the first priority of many students — but knows that people do care. On top of expanding their own stature, AU Athletics wants to help grow the stature of AU as a whole, he said.
“We have got to do our part to get people engaged,” Gill said. “We have got to make it interesting for people, and that starts by winning championships and a lot of games.”
Looking forward, Gill said it should be a good winter for AU sports fans. The wrestling team has two returning All-Americans and is the best dual-meet team in the nation. To go along with the upcoming season, Gill is also expecting both men’s and women’s basketball to compete for the Patriot League title.
“I am the eternal optimist,” Gill said. “I still have expectations that [men’s basketball] will have a good year and I think women’s basketball will be solid.”
Overall, Gill said he could not be happier with the direction the department is headed as a whole. While he said he knows there is room to grow in many areas, there is a lot of success to boast about. And even though AU will not be getting any new programs soon, current programs are improving everyday.
You can reach this staff writer at atomlinson@theeagleonline.com.
