May 2, 2010 FAYETTEVILLE - The 2009-10 athletic season is nearing its conclusion. As we shut the door on the past year and prepare for 2010-11, the FSU Sports Information office sat down with Director of Athletics Dr. Edward McLean to discuss a myriad of topics concerning Broncos Athletics. Q: What are your thoughts on the athletic season, as a whole, dating back to the Two Rivers Classic in September? Dr. Edward McLean: "There was a lot of anticipation at the beginning. Overall, all the teams, starting with football and carrying over to all the spring sports did excellent. I think, this season, we had one of the best overall winning percentages in the history of Fayetteville State. You look at volleyball -- they were one set away from winning a championship and golf finished in second place. Softball had a good season -- not as good as they hoped -- but they battled through some things. Bowling won the Western Division title again, but just came up a little short in the CIAA tournament. If things would’ve turned around a little bit, we could have easily ended up with four or five championships." "Now the challenge is going to be, can we sustain that level of intensity moving forward. I think we can and I think the teams and coaches are hungry enough. Football, it’s going to be a hard challenge to win another championship next year. Once you’re on top, everybody is after you and everybody wants to knock off the champion. Winning a conference championship, or even a divisional championship, is very difficult. Going forward, I think it’s going to be a very challenging year but I think it’s going to be a productive year for Fayetteville State." Q: In the past, you've said that ‘all CIAA Championships should come through Fayetteville.’ How close do you think FSU is to meeting that goal? EM: "That’s a philosophy that I want our coaches to understand and really take on. We’ve had very close to five come through Fayetteville this year. Football, Women’s Basketball, Bowling, Golf and Volleyball either won or had a chance to win this year. That’s what I want the mentality of all our coaches to be.” Q: Did you have a particular moment that stood out to you from this season? EM: "It’s really kind of a couple moments – with football and women’s basketball winning the championship. With football, of course, it started out with real slow. For football, the moment that sticks out is the Shaw University game. We didn’t play well offensively but the young men and the coaches never gave up. They did enough to win the game. I think winning that game against Shaw really kind of propelled us towards the championship game.” “Now you take women’s basketball, they started off slow with a coach adapting to players and players adapting to a new coach. I think the moment that resonates with me was the last home game against Virginia State. They really showed that they had the talent – and they knew they had the talent – and began to put it together there. I think that win just carried them on through the championship.” Q: There were five first-year head coaches at FSU this year. How do you think having them stay and build continuity will help in the future? EM: "Five new coaches, of course you have five new personalities coming in brand new. I think it’s going to be better next year. Better for them and better for me, because they know some things they didn’t know before. I’m really excited about the tennis program, even though she didn’t do that well, because the expectations weren’t that high. She (head coach Arie Bennett) has a lot of energy and enthusiasm – and I think all our coaches do – so that’s going to be a good thing for us.” Q: How big do you think the 2nd annual Two Rivers Classic can be? EM: "It’s going to be huge. It’s really going to be a challenge, not just for Fayetteville State, but for the University of North Carolina at Pembroke as well. Last year, the crowd was what we expected and the game was what we expected. The challenge is going to be, can we sustain the type of crowd that we had last year, with UNC-Pembroke having a much smaller venue to deal with. We put in 8,000+ last year and their stadium has a seating capacity of around 2,500-3,000. That’s going to be the challenge, getting their fans in as well as ours. But, sometimes, that’s a good problem to have.” Q: What are some of the main goals of you and your staff try to achieve during the summer months? EM: "We’re involved in some NCAA and CIAA conferences and we try to plan. One of the challenges we have at the conference level is getting schedules out. We just finished the football schedule and we are beginning to work on the basketball schedule. Also, we’ll start working on the 2011 football schedule as well. Schedules are constantly changing, with all the movement in the league, so we’re trying to get to the point where we can say ‘here is the schedule for the next five to 10 years.’” “Here at Fayetteville State, we’re preparing for the fall. We have a big project that we’re working on this summer, that is hoping that we have our video scoreboard (at Luther “Nick” Jeralds stadium) – that’s an ongoing project that we’re really excited about. Once we open the doors for fall football, we won’t have a lot of time to do other things. So, we try to get all of our scheduling done during the summer months.” Q: Do you encourage your coaches to schedule in a certain way? EM: "What we try to do, because of the downturn in the economy, we encourage our coaches to stay within a radius of about six hours. North Carolina is a good state to schedule a lot of games because there are a lot of schools in the state. We tell our coaches, in the non-conference, to look into Virginia and South Carolina as well.” Q: How do you feel about the new additions and trajectory of the CIAA? EM: “One of things that we’re doing is getting away from the double round-robin basketball schedule. It didn’t allow us to have many non-conference games. Now that Winston-Salem State University and with 13 teams, it’s hard to play everyone twice. When the region and NCAA are looking for strength of schedule, when you play everyone in your conference you don’t really get a good strength of schedule. Now, we’re going to a scenario where you’ll play everyone in your division twice and then everyone in the other division once. It’ll give us an opportunity to play some of the other schools in the region.” Q: Switching gears a little bit, what were your thoughts on the annual athletic banquet? EM: “The athletic banquet committee did an outstanding job. They changed the format and you know the danger when you change the format is some things are going to happen and we’ll work through those. Overall, I think the athletic banquet was a very successful one. I think the student-athletes enjoyed and it’s for them. I think we selected two great individuals – Kristy Mitchell and Paul Murphy – for the meritorious award. We want to get our student-athletes out in the community, not just on the field and in the courts. Those two individuals really portrayed the kinds of things we’re looking for" "As far as student-athlete of the year, as far as I could tell, those were easy choices. Our female student-athlete of the year (Tiffany Haywood) had an outstanding year in and out of the classroom, so that was an easy selection. Marcos Esquivel in football really was the catalyst to help our team keep going -- he was an easy selection as well. If we keep those quality and caliber individuals, I think athletics will be in great shape.” |
