There are many college athletic directors who are sweating bullets over a lost spring sports season, and even worse, the potential of a lost football season.
Wabash athletic director Matt Tanney isn’t one of them.
“We are very much interconnected with the college on finances and all that,” he said. “At the higher levels, Division I football for example, those finances are a little more driven by football revenue and those types of things.”
Wabash College had their annual day of giving on Tuesday — raising more than a million dollars.
For years the athletic programs at Wabash have been counted upon to help bring some of the best minds of young men all across the country to Crawfordsville, who want to continue their athletic careers, and earn one of the finest liberal arts degrees in the land. And Tanney says that hasn’t changed.
“From a department standpoint we are very plugged into what is going on from an admissions standpoint,” he said. “Our coaches obviously contribute significantly to recruiting each class. That’s always been a point of emphasis, but it’s especially true this year in light of everything that has happened and they’ve done a great job of that.”
The biggest challenge for Little Giant coaches have been from a recruiting standpoint, as many prospective athletes never had the chance to visit campus this spring.
“This environment has really created some unique recruiting challenges and opportunities,” Tanney, who graduated from Wabash in 2005, said. “You have students that hadn’t even visited campus before all this happened. They’ve been put in a situation where they need to evaluate their college choice without really having the opportunity to visit any campus.”
“Everybody is on a level playing field, and prospective athletes aren’t visiting any campuses right now, so our coaches have had to be as creative as they can in engaging with recruits and their families and still really conveying the value of a Wabash education.”
Wabash will welcome volleyball as a new sport for the 2020-2021 academic year, and Tanney said he is proud of how Kevin Russell, who was hired as the first coach last summer, has handled adversity in finalizing his first recruiting class.
“The spring is just a really important recruiting time,” Tanney said. “We have on campus visit days, and our volleyball recruiting process was disrupted the same way that everybody else was. Coach Russell did a really nice job. Was persistent in recruiting and having those conversations, and we are going to bring in a really nice class next year.”
The Little Giants will also open a new football stadium this fall, which has been under construction since late 2019, and is on schedule for the home opener in early September.
“The stadium has continued to move along at a really nice pace,” Tanney said. “It’s been really exciting to see it come along and develop, and right now we are still planning on playing football in that stadium on September 5.”
The biggest question is, will fall sports happen, and if they do, what will they look like?
On Tuesday, the California State University system announced that students will not return for normal instruction for the fall semester. That includes FBS football schools San Diego State, San Jose State, and Fresno State.
The consensus is that without students on campus, there will be no sports.
Wabash participates in Division III of the NCAA and is a member of the North Coast Athletic Conference.
“There are a number of committees in motion right now at the conference level,” Tanney said. “Ultimately at the conference level, the college presidents group council will make that final determination, based on recommendations from athletic directors and faculty athletic representatives and others in the conference.”
Tanney says it will simply come down to students being on campus, and then things will unfold from there.
“Division III certainly tends to be a little more regional, so there is maybe a greater opportunity there where we don’t need to fly all the way across the country for a conference opponent,” he added. “I think everything is still on the table at this point when you look at scheduling. The first question is will students be on campus? And if the answer to that question is yes, then we can really start to dive in on what does that mean on our campus and what does that mean on the campuses of our NCAC colleagues.”
