Feb. 18, 2008

by Tyler Blue `08

Ted Kissell couldn't quite put his finger on it. He got up and walked over to his desk where he keeps a thesaurus, for instances just like this.

But he didn't find what he was looking for in there, either.

He sat back down, pausing for a moment before slowly, carefully formulating the exact difference between the environment he worked for in the University of Arizona's athletic department and the environment he himself helped create at UD.

"There was just no sense of connection," he said. "The different sports programs kind of went about their own business."

And although he is quick to say he did not necessarily have a bad experience at his former place of employment, it was not the way he thought an athletic department should be run. So when he was named Director of Athletics at the University of Dayton 16 years ago, he set about to make things different.

"I'm going to have a very biased point of view on this, but I would hope that people would say we have a strong spirit of collaboration, that people really work together well and everybody is really working for everyone else to succeed," he said.

It is one thing to strive for such cohesion and quite another thing to actually obtain it. However, in this instance, it appears that Kissell's preaching has been put into practice.

"I think all of us want to be valued," Billy Schmidt, who came in with Brian Gregory as one of his assistants, said. "Ted and the administrators in the athletic department have created an environment where we as employees feel part of something special. Ted's always made each member of the department feel appreciated for the contributions they make and the roles that they play."

Neil Sullivan, the Director of Compliance, echoes Kissell's hopes and Schmidt's sentiments.

"Teams cheer each other on," Sullivan said. "Everyone likes to see all the teams do well. A lot of Friday nights you have the football team going to a soccer game, or the soccer team going to a football game. It's kind of one division that everybody supports each other and roots each other on."

For Kissell, it must be somewhat satisfying to here someone like Sullivan, a relative newcomer to the athletic department (he was hired in June, 2006), speak so decisively of the community atmosphere.

"I think it's a very professional organization that is run like a business but within the structure of a higher education institution," Sullivan said. "Tremendous people, tremendous character, people who really want to make Dayton athletics kind of the model for how intercollegiate athletics is supposed to be. Everyone really believes in the UD way."

The "UD way"--it is a phrase that embodies Kissell's very philosophy.

"We see four pillars that define the identity of our sports programs," Kissell said. "You can think of them as the legs of a stool or a chair."

It is on these pillars that the whole department is built upon. They are, in order of importance, integrity, academic excellence, community connection and competitive performance.

"Any time UD makes a hire, those pillars are accurately communicated," Sullivan said. "They're part of someone's performance review plan. It's something that's not just expected; it's demanded. Anyone without those four pillars would be lucky to make it through the hiring process."

And in each one of those pillars, the Flyers are soaring.

Although Kissell admits that integrity is hard to measure, he can attest to the fact that Dayton gets high marks in every NCAA and Atlantic 10 audit it goes through. The university is number one in the A-10 in terms of its Graduation Success Rate, and ranked sixth nationally. A partnership with both the YMCA and YWCA has been forged, where student-athletes serve area children in such ways as taking them around during Christmas on Campus.

That's not even mentioning the on court and on field success Dayton has seen this past school year. Combined, the volleyball, football, men's and women's soccer and men's and women's basketball teams have a winning percentage of 80% (through February 18).

There has never been a year at the University of Dayton when so many teams have won at such a high rate.

And the numbers only tell part of the story. Football won the Mid-Major National Championship and finished the year ranked 24th in all of FCS. Volleyball was ran ked nationally for the first time in its history. Women's basketball received votes in a national poll and has reached 20 win for the first time since becoming a Division I program. Men's basketball earned its highest ranking in 40 years. Just this past weekend, the women's track team placed second in the Atlantic 10, after never finishing higher than fifth.

But how, exactly, does the way the athletic department is run translate to winning programs?

Kissell says it starts with hiring the right person to coach.

"The most powerful way that it affects the players is that we know exactly what kind of person we're looking for in addition to what kind of coach we're looking for. In some places, there's more emphasis placed on their coaching competencies and not as much as we put on the whole person. We want it all."

Aside from making sure each and every coach lives by the four pillars, they also must have a passion for the particular game they teach.

"It has to be someone with great energy," Kissell said. "Coaching is very demanding and hyper-competitive, so if you're not working, you're thinking of work and worrying that you should be working."

Hiring the right people, though vital, is not the only thing administrators do to impact player performance. They also provide support and resources.

"Administrators don't win games, but they try to help develop a framework and develop a system where coaches can do what they do best, and that's coach," Sullivan said. "If we can simplify some of the processes that are outside of coaching--the more burden we can have--coaches can just coach."

It is impossible to overestimate the value of a supportive administration.

"All the resources we need to compete and succeed are provided for us," Schmidt, who has coached at Tennessee, Michigan and Seton Hall, said. "As a coach that means an awful lot to know that your administration really cares about your work and is supporting you in every way possible."

But perhaps the most telling sign that the UD athletic department is doing things right comes from the testimony of those not associated with the university.

"When we are putting on a Gridiron Classic or an NCAA basketball tournament, I would hope people would come in from the outside and say nobody does it better than the University of Dayton," Kissell said.

"By the way, they've said that."