Last year two seasons were cancelled and this year golf and
women’s basketball are axed
It has a fulltime athletic director who makes more than $100,000
a year. But what Gavilan College’s athletic department might need
to hire is an experienced PR firm that can polish up the
department’s ever-tarnishing image.
In the past month, Gavilan College has elected to cancel both
the men’s golf season as well as the women’s basketball season for
lack of player interest.
Last year two seasons were cancelled and this year golf and women’s basketball are axed
It has a fulltime athletic director who makes more than $100,000 a year. But what Gavilan College’s athletic department might need to hire is an experienced PR firm that can polish up the department’s ever-tarnishing image.
In the past month, Gavilan College has elected to cancel both the men’s golf season as well as the women’s basketball season for lack of player interest.
“We can offer all kinds of things here but we need to try and create programs where the interest is highest. What is this population of female students most interested in? That’s what we need to look at,” said Gavilan President Steve Kinsella. “It’s a matter of stabilizing the programs (to turn things around). We have to work our way through all of this, be persistent and never give up.”
While college officials downplay the recent decisions, they are merely the most recent actions in a pattern of downsizing the college’s athletic programs. Last year the college halted the women’s softball and soccer seasons.
Former employees of the college are beginning to question what’s going on with the athletic department, which continues to have ongoing recruiting struggles, a slew of coaching vacancies, teams with losing records, an excessive number of athletic programs being stopped – and even a pending wrongful termination lawsuit that was filed by the school’s former softball coach.
“These are all issues that are not good,” said Dave Ellis, who has been a physical education teacher at Gavilan for 30 years. “If I have a kid and we lived in the district the programs had better be good. I think a lot of this has to do with economics now, too.”
With all of the negative issues that have come up, some have questioned why Gavilan’s Athletic Director Ron Hannon, who is only responsible for a handful of intercollegiate sports programs, earned more money than the athletic directors from many surrounding junior colleges, including DeAnza College, Cabrillo College, West Valley and Monterey Peninsula College, according to a 2003-2004 comparison matrix study that was done by the Gavilan College Faculty Association.
In contrast, the athletic directors at the other schools were required to teach at least 50 percent of the time while overseeing a department with a minimum of 12 intercollegiate programs.
At the time of the study Hannon, who isn’t required to teach or coach, oversaw six programs and had a base salary of $87,373, plus benefits that pushed his total package to $106,045 annually, and he’s had pay raises since.
“A lot of what I hear from others is that something is not kosher in the athletic department there,” said Bob Garcia, a former athletic director at Gavilan College. “What the school needs are fulltime coaches. The AD there now is making a lot of money. Get him involved in coaching. He’s fulltime and that’s what the kids need.
“My last year there I taught a full load of classes,” Garcia continued. “I was the department chair, the athletic director and the head football coach. The full-timers there should coach. If not, they shouldn’t be a part of the P.E. Department. Sue Dodd (former AD) is there and she’s not coaching either. If I was still there, the first thing that I would do is battle for more fulltime coaches.”
At the center of all of the controversy is Hannon, who was hired in 2001 to revamp the department, which had seen the stoppage of all women’s sports just a year prior to his hiring, resulting in additional concerns over the school’s ability to comply with Title IX – a 1970s-era federal law requiring a level playing field and equal opportunity for all male and female athletes.
Despite the ongoing concerns with the department, Kinsella believes Hannon is getting the job done.
“He’s made a lot of real positive changes,” Kinsella said. “He’s done a lot to make sure that the needs of the department were identified. He’s added volleyball and he’s worked on salary increases. The problems really come back to the student base that you’re working with. If the students don’t want to come here, it doesn’t matter whose in charge of a program. If we offer what they are looking for they will come here.”
Kinsella acknowledged that some of the problems could also be from the lack of success on the playing field.
“The football team has been to a bowl game two of the last three years. I’m not sure of the records (all sub .500) for the other programs. That could be part of it but I can’t tell how many go to other colleges for that reason. First we need to get the programs up and running and keep them viable year after year. Then get the right combination of students year after year. Then, work to improve the won/loss record.”
Garcia disagrees and would like to see a championship mentality engulf the campus from day one, and believes the struggles in the department will continue until teams start winning on the field.
“If the program is not viable, cut it out,” said Garcia, who coached the 1973 Rams football team to a national championship. “Don’t embarrass the school and cancel the season midway through it – otherwise the kids won’t come here. I want a program that’s first class. (Hire) someone who cares about teams and winning. I want to see someone who wants to win championships. If you have a part timer, who’s the right guy, and is committed, OK. But I don’t think part-timers are in that category.”
What Kinsella and Hannon both know is that they can’t blame the lack of success on the playing field to a small talent pool. The South County area has a number of strong athletes, otherwise the local high schools wouldn’t be as successful as they are in the Central Coast Section playoffs each year.
But those athletes must be going somewhere else, otherwise the Gavilan’s women’s basketball team would have more than the five players who competed in the final games before the plug was pulled on the season.
“I knew it would be a challenge when I got here,” Hannon said. “I didn’t expect the inconsistencies in the student athletes desire to compete one day versus the next.”
Hannon’s fulltime position was created and approved by the district’s Board of Trustees, which saw a need for an administrative level position as a means to focus fulltime on all of the issues that needed to be addressed.
At the time, a number of people in the Gavilan College Faculty Association objected to the idea of creating a fulltime, non-teaching position in the department that came with a six-figure salary.
Prior to creating the new position, the athletic director position was looked at as a part-time proposition that was often granted to a faculty member in the physical education department. The AD would volunteer for the position as a way to minimize his teaching requirements in the classroom.
One former faculty member at the school, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the idea was “ram-rodded down their throats” by trustees. He would have rather have seen the budgeted money that was used to hire Hannon be used to hire three full time coaches instead, which could have solved or eliminated a number of problems.
According to Garcia, the problems in the department stem from the lack of fulltime coaches. Only the head softball and football coaching positions are fulltime.
“Part-timers want to go through the motions,” Garcia said. “They need to talk about getting coaches in there that are hungry. I don’t want a coach that puts together a half-ass team that cancels the season because they can’t get 15 girls to play. I don’t want that type of person or that program. It’s got to stop.”
Hannon says the hiring of more fulltime coaches is a top priority.
“We’re bringing in two fulltime coaches this spring – for softball and baseball,” he said. “Obviously, that will bring stability. We need to hire the right coaches, too, and be really selective. It takes the right person in place to build a program.”
Garcia went on to point out that the fulltime coach has more time to recruit, coach and handle issues with players on the campus because they are more accessible.
Garcia’s accessibility was one of the reason he was so effective at bringing quality athletes to his program. In fact, he was so effective at recruiting that one year he got an athlete to commit to the football program at Gavilan – even though he had a full scholarship to play at San Jose State.
The year was 1984 and Gavilan was struggling to win on the field. Garcia had just taken over the football program for the second time and was having difficulty getting the kids to commit.
“I met with all the kids from Gilroy and Live Oak who were wavering on going to Hartnell, Cabrillo and San Jose City College,” Garcia said. “I would show up everywhere to talk to kids about coming to Gavilan. Norm Dow (former Live Oak football coach) told me that every time he turned around he’d see me with my Gavilan jacket on. He saw me day and night. I got Rhett Hall (former NFL player) to come here. He had a full ride to San Jose State. I tell the kids they are crazy not to take [the scholarships] but he said he wanted to go to Cal. The coaches at Cal said he wouldn’t be ready for a year and a half. So he came Gavilan. He was 218 pounds when he left he was 260.”
When Garcia accepted the position of wrestling coach, he had never been on a mat in his life. The first year he had five wrestlers, but he contacted every kid in the district who wrestled.
“The next year I had a full team and we finished second in the league. The next year we were ranked 10th in the state. I couldn’t have done that if I was part time. This AD has got to make Gavilan available to the three high schools. Go meet the kids and sell them on Gavilan College.”
But selling them on the local college isn’t easy, Hannon said.
“Kids who grow up in a small town like this say as soon as I turn 18 I’m out of here,” he said. “I did the same thing. That whole new world may be only 30 minutes away, but I went through the same thing. It’s like a catch 22. A lot of kids realize that they can’t afford to be on their own and they come back home and go to Gavilan. We’ve seen that too. But I would say to the athlete whose looking to play D1 that the only way they’re going to get exposure is with playing time. You can play on a team and win a championship or 20 games, but you may be sitting on the end of the bench. If you come to Gavilan you’re going to get playing time.”
